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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (47463)	1/31/2008 1:11:49 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541977

OK lets examine the definitons as they apply to Lincoln. 1 - Favorable to progress of reform? Well some types of change he was favorable to, others not (for example he was favorable to ending slavery, but not to allowing states to leave). 2 - A member of a progressive political party? Not the way the term progressive is commonly understood. 3 - Circular definition, no way to apply it. 4 - "favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible" Not really. Today this idea would be called libertarian, and Lincoln was no libertarian. 5 - Same as 4. 6 - Yes he was liberal by this definition, but than so are 99.9+% of Americans. 7 - Free from prejudice or bigotry? Hardly. But I suppose if your measuring relative to the standards of the day he was better than average. 8 - I'm not sure about this one, maybe. 9 - Again unsure. 10 - Same meaning as 9 11 - I wouldn't really apply this one to a person. 12 - Again not something that applies to a person. 13 - Well he wasn't a slave. 14 - Circular 15 - Doesn't apply to Lincoln So maybe one or two out of 15. If your counting relative to the people in America at the time rather than in an absolute sense you get several more, but probably less than half. But really one definition should be enough. If you want to say Lincoln is a liberal because you use definition 6, or maybe even 1, than fine he was a liberal, but saying that isn't a very meaningful statement, and it doesn't mean he wasn't a conservative.