DiogenesLamp:
"At least you acknowledge that Lincoln hatched the Federal Leviathan that has denied the states the rights they had under the original framework in which this system of governance was created.
Lincoln was the first to massively expand Federal power, followed by Teddy, Wilson, FDR, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama."Wuli: "Yes."
No! Like nearly everything DiogenesLamp posts, it's a total lie, a self-delusion & fantasy.
The truth is, unless you declare war on the 13th, 14th & 15th amendments, Lincoln had nothing to do with the huge expansion in Federal Big Government which did not really get rolling until FDR's New Deal, over 65 years after Lincoln's death.
By contrast to FDR's massive New Deal increases, Progressives like TR and Wilson weren't even blips on the radar screen of growing Big Government.
- 1858 Democrat Buchanan's non-debt spending was 2.6% of GDP.
- 1871 Republican Grant's non-debt spending was 2.5% of GDP
- 1906 Progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt's non-debt spending was 2.4% of GDP.
- 1914 Progressive Democrat Wilson's non-debt spending was 2.7% of GDP (pre-WWI).
- 1927 Republican "Silent Cal" Coolidge non-debt spending was 2.5% of GDP.
- 1936 Democrat New Deal Franklin Roosevelt's non-debt spending reached 17% (pre-WWII) and has remained north of that ever since.
So, you can blame Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt all you wish, but the fact is it was
Democrats under FDR who first spiraled the Federal Government out of control, and have never looked back since.
And no region of the country was more solid in its support of Democrat FDR's New Deal than the Democrat Solid South.
So, FRiends, don't blame Lincoln.
Just look in the mirror for your own ancestors. ![]()
You are right, and wrong in my opinion.
Everything in the development of ideas is building blocks, one on another.
No Lincoln was not what we’d call a “progressive”, though to achieve his aims he took unprecedented powers unto himself without consulting Congress, and only getting their acquiescence after the fact when he needed to.
But everything about a growing federal power is not demonstrated in dollars and sense (as you try to assume), and is often expressed most in governing philosophy.
Yes, for another thirty years after Lincoln presidents are more restrained than Lincoln as to federal power and ambition tied to it. It was also a time when much political attention as to federal powers was expended on reconstruction, most (not all) of the continental consolidation of the united states, native American issues, and foreign policy issues - mostly with Spain and Latin America. But it was during those thirty years and under the conditions during them that the leading lights of the progressives were born and came into their own.
You have to go back to wherefrom the progressives took their philosophy of the supremacy of the federal government in domestic affairs. Progressivism and the idea of government by the experts enters American politics officially in 1890, not 1936.
By the turn of the century it is a full blown movement in politics, law and education. Wilson - 1914 - thought there was no difference between socialism and democracy. That idea did not just spring into Wilson’s mind from nowhere in 1914.
The founder of progressive education, John Dewey was born in 1859, and by 1904 he is beginning his career in establishing his philosophy of “progressive” education. Olver Wendall Holmes fought in the Civil War and obtains most of his education afterwards. He was no intellectual stranger to Lincoln and his presidency. He was influenced during and after his education by thinkers who also influenced many progressives. Teddy Roosevelt, a Progressive, appoints Oliver Wendall Holmes to the Supreme Court. Holmes becomes one of FDRs defenders on the expansion of the regulatory state.
No Lincoln was no direct progenitor of progressivism.
But ideas are not merely the result of other ideas alone, but have some origins in the actions of others, events in which others played a major role, what those leaders in the events said, believed & wrote, conditions resulting from those events, and ideas born of thinking about those conditions. No it is not a straight line from Lincoln to FDR. And no we cannot say that Lincoln even foreshadowed FDR.
But we can see the philosophical trails and branches from the end of the civil war - and within the conditions that then prevailed - up to the opening of the 1900s, and they include - all along - trends leading to and eventually including progressivism.