What do our resident members of the Party of Lincoln think of this quote?

[RINO Tom]

Sick topic, bro.  I prefer this one, though:

 “It is best for all to leave each man to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war on capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.”

[RINO Tom]

ITT: using a quote where Lincoln defends striking workers as proof that he was a conservative.

I wouldn't be such an idiot to apply our modern definitions of liberal and conservative to someone who died in the 1860s, but it's pretty undeniable that Lincoln was a huge fan of the free market and believed deeply in the ability of any American to achieve wealth through hard work and determination alone, and that those who achieve that wealth should not be demonized or penalized for doing so - a belief that certainly does not put him at odds with modern Republicans on the issue.

Alas, we all know that Lincoln was a communist for writing a letter to Karl Marx.

[RINO Tom]

But seriously, does anyone genuinely think, while being intellectually honest, that Abraham Lincoln would be proud of the present day GOP? The party of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Dick Cheney, Steve Stockman, Joe Wilson, Scott DesJarlais, Joe Barton, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Ken Buck, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Pat Buchanan, Tom Tancredo, Chris McDaniel, Louie Gohmert, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Steve King, Newt Gingrich, Paul LePage, Sam Brownback, Rick Scott, Mary Fallin, Orly Taitz, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Steve Scalise, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, David Vitter, Jim Inhofe...and the list goes on.

Nope.  However, there are tons of people who are still Republicans who are publicly critical of where the party currently stands, and there's not a lot of reason to believe Lincoln would be proud of the current Democratic Party (or any of its forms over the years), either.

Trying to apply modern politics to the 1800s is truly bizarre, though, especially using modern terms.  "Lincoln leaned left for his time."  What the  does that even mean?  LOL.  Lincoln is going to be whatever people want him to be, and that's fine.  All we can really say is Abe was a member of a party that was largely pro-business, skeptical of immigration, for restricting and eventually dismantling slavery and it usually attracted the Northern business community, Blacks who could vote (eventually) and religiously Puritan Northerners.  If people want to attach liberal or conservative to those things, fine ... kind of pointless.

To people like RFayette, being conservative has more to do with how much you talk about Jesus, how uncomfortable you are around minorities and how backwards your thinking is, LOL.  I do not share that line of thinking, and calling Lincoln a liberal with a straight face is just as dumb as calling him a conservative.

[RINO Tom]

But seriously, does anyone genuinely think, while being intellectually honest, that Abraham Lincoln would be proud of the present day GOP? The party of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Dick Cheney, Steve Stockman, Joe Wilson, Scott DesJarlais, Joe Barton, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Ken Buck, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Pat Buchanan, Tom Tancredo, Chris McDaniel, Louie Gohmert, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Steve King, Newt Gingrich, Paul LePage, Sam Brownback, Rick Scott, Mary Fallin, Orly Taitz, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Steve Scalise, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, David Vitter, Jim Inhofe...and the list goes on.

Nope.  However, there are tons of people who are still Republicans who are publicly critical of where the party currently stands, and there's not a lot of reason to believe Lincoln would be proud of the current Democratic Party (or any of its forms over the years), either.

Trying to apply modern politics to the 1800s is truly bizarre, though, especially using modern terms.  "Lincoln leaned left for his time."  What the  does that even mean?  LOL.  Lincoln is going to be whatever people want him to be, and that's fine.  All we can really say is Abe was a member of a party that was largely pro-business, skeptical of immigration, for restricting and eventually dismantling slavery and it usually attracted the Northern business community, Blacks who could vote (eventually) and religiously Puritan Northerners.  If people want to attach liberal or conservative to those things, fine ... kind of pointless.

To people like RFayette, being conservative has more to do with how much you talk about Jesus, how uncomfortable you are around minorities and how backwards your thinking is, LOL.  I do not share that line of thinking, and calling Lincoln a liberal with a straight face is just as dumb as calling him a conservative.

Dude, Lincoln set out to abolish a quasi-feudalistic agrarian slave society where racial and economic inequality was literally caste-like. If Lincoln wasn't Left for his time, than what on Earth were the Democrats?

Lincoln was a corporate lawyer who saw slavery as a direct assault on a free market that he believed allowed anyone to rise to wealth through hard work alone.  Hardly the SJW you all fetishize him as.

[RINO Tom]

Lincoln was a corporate lawyer who saw slavery as a direct assault on a free market that he believed allowed anyone to rise to wealth through hard work alone.  Hardly the SJW you all fetishize him as.

Eh, he did represent corporations, but there was hardly a developed system of corporate lawyers that we see today. He also represented murderers and criminals, like any lawyer. That's kind of what they do, it doesn't mean they love everyone they represent.

And he was a social justice warrior in the sense that he wanted to fight for underprivileged people. Modern SJWs are largely teenagers with no life experience, so it would actually be a slur to call him that.

My point is anyone standing up and calling anyone pre-New Deal a clear cut "liberal" or "conservative" and intending it to have any inherent relation to how we discuss those ideologies today is making some dubious claims, IMO.

[RINO Tom]

But seriously, does anyone genuinely think, while being intellectually honest, that Abraham Lincoln would be proud of the present day GOP? The party of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Dick Cheney, Steve Stockman, Joe Wilson, Scott DesJarlais, Joe Barton, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Ken Buck, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Pat Buchanan, Tom Tancredo, Chris McDaniel, Louie Gohmert, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Steve King, Newt Gingrich, Paul LePage, Sam Brownback, Rick Scott, Mary Fallin, Orly Taitz, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Steve Scalise, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, David Vitter, Jim Inhofe...and the list goes on.

Nope.  However, there are tons of people who are still Republicans who are publicly critical of where the party currently stands, and there's not a lot of reason to believe Lincoln would be proud of the current Democratic Party (or any of its forms over the years), either.

Trying to apply modern politics to the 1800s is truly bizarre, though, especially using modern terms.  "Lincoln leaned left for his time."  What the  does that even mean?  LOL.  Lincoln is going to be whatever people want him to be, and that's fine.  All we can really say is Abe was a member of a party that was largely pro-business, skeptical of immigration, for restricting and eventually dismantling slavery and it usually attracted the Northern business community, Blacks who could vote (eventually) and religiously Puritan Northerners.  If people want to attach liberal or conservative to those things, fine ... kind of pointless.

To people like RFayette, being conservative has more to do with how much you talk about Jesus, how uncomfortable you are around minorities and how backwards your thinking is, LOL.  I do not share that line of thinking, and calling Lincoln a liberal with a straight face is just as dumb as calling him a conservative.

Dude, Lincoln set out to abolish a quasi-feudalistic agrarian slave society where racial and economic inequality was literally caste-like. If Lincoln wasn't Left for his time, than what on Earth were the Democrats?

I'd love to see an attempt to describe the ideology of the antebellum Democratic party in modern terms.  I expect the result to be hysterical.

I'll save you the suspense: "conservative," because they were bad and so is modern GOP, case closed, go Obama.

[RINO Tom]

This thread got me really curious about the actual platforms and voting records of the early Republicans. In looking at the platform of 1856 and 1860 we see support for the use of federal funds for the establishment of a pacific railroad as well as the improvement of rivers and harbors. The 1860 platform specifically states:

"15. That appropriations by Congress for river and harbor improvements of a national character, required for the accommodation and security of an existing commerce, are authorized by the Constitution, and justified by the obligation of Government to protect the lives and property of its citizens.

16. That a railroad to the Pacific Ocean is imperatively demanded by the interests of the whole country; that the federal government ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its construction; and that, as preliminary thereto, a daily overland mail should be promptly established."

Now this sounds remarkably similar to the demands for "internal improvements" of the Whigs. The desire to use federal funding, with congressional approval, to support local and municipal infrastructure. One could argue that this is a very "liberal" policy as it would require greater federal expenditure. Using public funds to build up public infrastructure isn't the most laissez-faire or "free market" strategy.

Beyond this, the Republicans in the Congress overwhelmingly supported the Revenue Acts of 1861 and 1862, which established a crude form of income tax. The Republicans again supported raising these taxes in 1864. Lincoln himself gave no indication that he supported the eventual lowering of the  taxes, and they weren't lowered until 1872, after the Democrats made serious gains in 1870.

Given all this, I think its hard to put the Fremont-Lincoln-Grant Republican party on the right side of the economic spectrum.

A couple of things I'd like to add.  All infrastructure spending is not equal.  In the timeline of societal development, there's going to be a point where nearly everyone supports heavy infrastructure investment (earlier on) and a point where it'll become much less popular (later on).  Lincoln lived in a very different United States, and it's dubious to draw a parallel between wanting a railroad that was regularly attacked as being only beneficial to those wealthy and powerful enough to use it (it was unanimously supported by the Northern business community) and supporting something like a higher tax to improve an already fine sidewalk in 2016.  Supporting infrastructure spending just can't be chalked up to a liberal view, IMO.  It's so much more complicated than that.  As for those taxes, they were explicitly designed to be a wartime measure in anticipation of drastic increases in spending due to the war.  Those taxes were obviously repealed, and it wasn't until the 1890s that a Democratic Congress gave us our first permanent income tax.  There were several "Rockefeller Republicans" during the 20th Century who had no problem with raising a modest tax (which Lincoln's absolutely was) in order to help balance the budget, most recently one George HW Bush, and I don't see people so eager to claim them as liberals, no doubt because they haven't attained the largely mythical status that early Republicans have.

How you place the early GOP (and Federalists and Whigs, for that matter) will depend highly on what metric you use.  If you define conservatism as relating to small government (which I find horrifyingly dumb, but I digress), then sure, the Democrats (and DRs before them) were easily the more "conservative" party.  If you are talking about cultural conservatism, I don't think you can draw a good line.  Democrats were trying to "conserve" slavery, but many Republicans (including Lincoln) saw slavery, especially by the 1850s, as a corruption of the ORIGINAL intent of the Constitution, and that is a fairly conservative argument against it.  Additionally, as Shua said, things were so regional that it's hard to draw a line.  Republicans and Democrats from NYC were going to oppose prohibition, for example, while many rural Republicans and rural Democrats strongly supported it (I believe the GOP was definitely more supportive of it as a whole).  On immigration, it seems rather beyond debate that the GOP held a more conservative view on the issue.

However, if you view those ideologies like I do and believe that one's motive is much more important than one's method, then there's little doubt that (outside the 1850s to 1950s South, which was a one-party region which was obviously going to include Democrats of all ideologies) the Federalists then Whigs then Republicans have represented a traditionally "conservative" collection of interests that revolved around support for business interests, pushing moral superiority and being suspicious of mass immigration, while the Democratic-Republicans and then Democrats have fancied themselves as the champion of the downtrodden and needy (whatever method they had to use to do help them) and the more morally relaxed (anti-Puritan) party ... the one big asterisk is that Democrats have very much changed who they consider worthy of saving over the years.