Who was more "right-wing"?

[Person Man]

...

[The Govanah Jake]

Right wing as in using limited governmental power and keeping more to tradition? Andrew Jackson then.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Lincoln. Jackson was more of an egalitarian in spirit than Lincoln was.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Right wing as in using limited governmental power and keeping more to tradition? Andrew Jackson then.

that's not how politics worked in Jackson's day. Opposing a big, powerful government was a left-wing position back then.

[The Govanah Jake]

Right wing as in using limited governmental power and keeping more to tradition? Andrew Jackson then.

that's not how politics worked in Jackson's day. Opposing a big, powerful government was a left-wing position back then.

I was comparing both from a modern perspective though. Today those terms are what most would consider right wing and Jackson was arguably more incline to use limited governmental power and keeping to tradition. There was no question in the original post to answer "In There Time, who was more right wing: Jackson or Lincoln".

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Right wing as in using limited governmental power and keeping more to tradition? Andrew Jackson then.

that's not how politics worked in Jackson's day. Opposing a big, powerful government was a left-wing position back then.

I was comparing both from a modern perspective though. Today those terms are what most would consider right wing and Jackson was arguably more incline to use limited governmental power and keeping to tradition. There was no question in the original post to answer "In There Time, who was more right wing: Jackson or Lincoln".

Answering from a modern day perspective, doesn't that do disservice to the poll? To each their own I guess.

[RINO Tom]

Lincoln. Jackson was more of an egalitarian in spirit than Lincoln was.

This, though neither was anything close to "right-wing."

[SWE]

Right wing as in using limited governmental power and keeping more to tradition? Andrew Jackson then.

that's not how politics worked in Jackson's day. Opposing a big, powerful government was a left-wing position back then.

In that case, Jackson was decidedly on the right

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Lincoln. Jackson was more of an egalitarian in spirit than Lincoln was.

In abolishing slavery Lincoln was the most egalitarian President in history, policy-wise.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Lincoln. Jackson was more of an egalitarian in spirit than Lincoln was.

In abolishing slavery Lincoln was the most egalitarian President in history, policy-wise.

Jackson's ideology was more focused on what he saw as the average person (relative to his Whig opponents), and his support base was thoroughly downmarket.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Lincoln. Jackson was more of an egalitarian in spirit than Lincoln was.

In abolishing slavery Lincoln was the most egalitarian President in history, policy-wise.

Jackson's ideology was more focused on what he saw as the average person (relative to his Whig opponents), and support base was thoroughly downmarket.

So Herrenvolk white supremacists are egalitarian. Got it.

"What he saw as the average person" bla bla bla. Meanwhile, in terms of the actual population of the United States Jackson upheld a monstrously inegalitarian system which Lincoln lead the abolition of as President.

[RINO Tom]

Lincoln. Jackson was more of an egalitarian in spirit than Lincoln was.

In abolishing slavery Lincoln was the most egalitarian President in history, policy-wise.

This gets in to the context of the times.  Your statement is objectively true, I suppose.  However (and I'll take political flack for saying this, but keep in mind I'm pro-choice), try to imagine the slavery debate like the abortion debate today.  Is the GOP more "egalitarian" than the Democrats because it is fighting for the rights of the unborn, while the Democrats are favoring the rights of the grown woman instead?  I think that's closer to how people saw it back then.

I remember reading several campaign ads in college courses on the Civil War where Democrats accused Republicans of pretty much whoring themselves out to big business while going on and on about the rights of subhuman slaves while they didn't give a rat's ass about poor Irish or Italian immigrants starving in New York City, for example.  One quote from Stephen Douglas was something to the effect of (regarding the 1860 elections), "Let us make this a mandate on tolerance; only the Democratic Party will protect the rights of ALL Americans, regardless of their religion, immigrant status or riches."  That sentence doesn't even have Black Americans on the radar, and I think when thinking about these politicians' ideologies, that's at least somewhat important to remember.  A quote from Douglas' Wikipedia page, for example:

"The debates were redefining republicanism. Lincoln advocated equality of opportunity, arguing that individuals and society advanced together. Douglas embraced a democratic doctrine that emphasized equality of all citizens (only whites were citizens), in which individual merit and social mobility was not a main goal."

So, even if the end result was Lincoln providing a more "egalitarian" (maybe even liberal) effect on society than Jackson and his political descendents did, it could be argued this is not an indication of his ideology.

[Mr. Reactionary]

$20> $5

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

i think this is a kōan meant to release one from attachment to categories.

[darklordoftech]

Is the GOP more "egalitarian" than the Democrats because it is fighting for the rights of the unborn

I have heard Republicans claim to be egalitarians on the basis that they're fighting for the rights of the unborn.

In abolishing slavery Lincoln was the most egalitarian President in history, policy-wise.

In fact, Marx himself praised Lincoln.

[RINO Tom]

Is the GOP more "egalitarian" than the Democrats because it is fighting for the rights of the unborn

I have heard Republicans claim to be egalitarians on the basis that they're fighting for the rights of the unborn.

Right, and many Democrats would say "you say you're pro-life about these fetuses, but you don't give two shlts about inner-city Black people in poverty."  Sounds an awful lot like criticisms coming from Democrats of the 1860s, too.

[darklordoftech]

I wonder what the arguments were for Irish and Italian immigrants being equal while blacks weren't and vica versa.

[AN63093]

Define "right wing."

Jackson was the more populist, so does that make him more left wing?

The most aristocratic people in the US at that time were estate holders in VA and MD that descended from English nobility.  They split between Crawford and Adams in 1824, and between Jackson and Adams in 1828.  Hardly a ringing endorsement.  These voters did not support Lincoln in 1860, but they didn't vote Breckinridge either (most voted for Bell).  Jackson's strongest support was in Appalachia from poor Scots-Irish that didn't have two pennies to rub together.  Is the candidate with highest support among poor people the "right wing" candidate?

Most US manufacturing and big business (to the extent big business even existed then) supported Adams in 1824-28, and Clay in 1832.  They were not Jackson supporters.  They also supported Lincoln in 1860, or in some cases, Douglas.  Basically none supported Breckinridge.

Most people that call Jackson right-wing haven't actually studied who certain demographics voted for at the time, and just call him "right wing" because he was sort of a dick, from Tennessee, and hated Indians.  Well, sorry, but that's not what the definition of "right wing" is.

[darklordoftech]

Before 1896, the Democrats' economic policies were laissez-faire while the Republicans' economic policies were mercantilist. William Jennings Bryan's nomination replaced the laissez-faire vs. mercantilist split with the right vs. left split that exists today. Jackson's economic policies were laissez-faire while Jackson's opponents and Lincoln supported mercantilist economic policies.

It should also be kept in mind that Lincoln != the Republican Party of his time. Lincoln wrote a letter saying that, "I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes" When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy. [sic]" and many Irish and Italian immigrants who normally voted Democrat voted for Lincoln.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Jackson was on the right even for his time. Clay's American system was the left.

[darklordoftech]

Jackson definitely was a majoritarian, believing that the will of the majority should trump not only the rights of minorities, but also the Constitution, hence the incident with the Native American Supreme Court decision. Jackson said, "The majority wants the Indians removed from their land regardless of what a piece of paper or a judge says, so that's what I'm going do."

[Goldwater]

They were both dirty commies, obviously.

[RINO Tom]

Jackson was on the right even for his time. Clay's American system was the left.

No.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Lincoln. Jackson was more of an egalitarian in spirit than Lincoln was.

In abolishing slavery Lincoln was the most egalitarian President in history, policy-wise.

This gets in to the context of the times.  Your statement is objectively true, I suppose.  However (and I'll take political flack for saying this, but keep in mind I'm pro-choice), try to imagine the slavery debate like the abortion debate today.  Is the GOP more "egalitarian" than the Democrats because it is fighting for the rights of the unborn, while the Democrats are favoring the rights of the grown woman instead?  I think that's closer to how people saw it back then.

Which "people"? Is that how black Americans perceived the issue of slavery at the time? That they were foetuses?

The truth written into the founding of the United States (and the Enlightenment project more generally) is that "all men are created equal". Sure, if we ignore that essential truth and consider black people as something less-than-fully human, like a foetus, then your analogy might make sense. And perhaps you are correct in asserting that's how many white Americans viewed the morality of slavery at the time (though of course that does not include Lincoln himself or the Republican party in general). But to adopt that racist viewpoint today in order to construct some laboured political mythology is an abdication of our own moral responsibility to interpret history with the values we believe are right in the 21st century.

So perhaps you are right, many white Americans in the 1860's, particularly Democrats, might have considered Jackson to have been more egalitarian than Lincoln (though note that Jackson himself was far from a social leveller, descending more from a tradition of reflexive opposition to centralised power rather than a critic of inequality per-se). But they could only believe this by dehumanising or erasing the the existence of black Americans. To agree with them on the historical record is to essentially commit the same error in political, historical, moral judgement which they did: to believe that the United States is exclusively a white man's republic with no political space for black people.

[Young Conservative]

Lincoln- and it isn't close.