At that time Lincoln was a liberal or progressive. In fact it is the Nixon southern strategy that turns the GOP into a hate machine.

You all need a good lesson in American Political History.

The US is basically a progressive nation considering that progressives are for expanding the franchise and protecting the people from the avaricious nature of business and elites. At the turn of the 19th cent it was realized that only government was big enough to curb business and by mid century it was realized that only organized labor would be strong enough to confront the demands upon an individuals labor and get a just wage.

It is not the part which the OP is talking about but rather the ideas and ideals that have made this one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Unfortunately, with the election of Reagan and his policies of breaking unions has led to a long period of wage stagnation and with it the killing off of the middle class.

Don't believe it do some study!

what you either can't or won't understand is that some the items mentioned were pessed by Republicans. And that the Democrat party has morphed from a centrist orientation to a very liberal one. Although Kennedy, Johnson were democrats they were NOT liberals .. The policies and philosophies of JFK would today resemble conservative more closely than liberal outlook. Furthermore definition of liberal vs conservative changes over time and circumstance. The founding fathers could very well be considered liberal or even revolutionary. The Constitution after all was an excersize in radical change. But today a staunch upholder of that document would be accurately labeled a Conservative. In many ways your entire diatribe is not relevent with current nomenclature.

Of course I do because to do otherwise would only facilitate liberals to claim all history as they see fit, you folks don't understand conservatism and only see it as an evil serving its corporate masters, nothing could be farther from the truth, conservatives basically have the same concerns as do liberals, we just see different solutions for those problems. We are very much aware that government solves little other than put a superficial band aid on a problem hiding it as it festers and Gangrene takes hold.... No Nagy, the Dems and the liberals who support them do not get to claim a history that is not theirs, as conditions in the country change people place different priorities on different problems, successful leaders be they republican or democrat solve those problems by being pragmatic and applying sensible well thought out solutions. The fact is that Lincoln was not a liberal, Lincoln did not want to free the slaves in fact he tried to negotiate a solution with the southern states that would have prolonged slavery but was unable to do so.... Lincoln was concerned about saving the union and collecting his revenues for "Internal Improvements" that would strengthen the economies of the Northern industrialized states... He was not about social justice and our liberal friends here do not get to claim him as one of theirs.... He did what he felt was best, and as much as I really don't care for much of Lincoln's ideas I can live with the fact that he was a republican. I find it odd that you folks like to talk about the parties changing over the years and there were times when democrats acted like republicans and republicans acted more like democrats but your claiming of periodic changes in the ideals of the parties just do not hold water.... Teddy Roosevelt was a republican who started the National Park system but also went after monopolies and crony capitalism, to me this is a conservative trait, now I know liberals would love to claim it as theirs but I really don't see that in liberal action only in their rhetoric... I think that liberals and this administration especially love big business, their only exception to big business they want more control over them as they want more control over us all, but progressives are having a love affair with big business, conservatives.... not so much. But getting back to Roosevelt, so if the parties were so flipped back then how do you explain Wilson? The progressive racist hero of the democrat party? Then how do you explain Coolidge who followed Wilson.... There is less to this party flipping than you would have us believe.... There are different perceptions and solutions for the different problems that our history has faced us with and even though conservatives may have some commonality in principles, we are all different and have different understanding of those principles and as individuals would apply somewhat different solutions.... Instead of liberals trying to claim a history that is not theirs maybe they would do better to recognize that conservatives (republicans) have in many instances served this country very well. John F. Kennedy would by most measures be considered a conservative today, yet I will not try to claim his history for the republican party or for the conservative movement, too bad that liberals do not have similar integrity.

My, my, such conceit is rarely seen except for in a political discussion with a liberal, it is no secret that progressive websites for the last year or so have urged progressives to stop hating the constitution and lay claim to it and here you are, following your marching orders.

The founders were not progressives, they were conservatives who had tired of the oppressive government that served the power structure of England, they wrote the most conservative founding document that the world has ever seen and one that has throughout our country's history has been hated by progressives as being restrictive and as in impediment to their vision of redistribution and limiting our freedoms and property rights for the greater good. No, our founders were anything but progressives, they were pragmatists that saw the tyranny of an omnipotent federal government and wrote a strict charter to control it. If you read the writings of our founders that sound little different than the folks you care to demonize today, you are so shallow in your beliefs, you act as if we do not have the Federalists Papers or the biographies of these men to read and understand who they were....

But you progressives know that you have so destroyed our educational system that most of the young in this country have lost touch with our countries history so you try to rewrite it laying claim to that which is not yours....

Our founders were anything but progressives, they too were what you would call the far right of today, just because they would no longer accept the status-quo you seem to think that they are progressives.... Well the conservative movement of today wants nothing to do with the status-quo in this country today, so I guess that makes us progressives also.

I would have much preferred a Single-payer healthcare system, but let me count the ways in which the Affordable Care Act is so disastrous.
1 - It has helped provide more affordable health insurance to about 8 million previously uninsured families.
2 - It has helped to bring health insurance cost inflation to the lowest level in more than 50 years.
3- It has enabled children under 26 years of age to get coverage under their parents' insurance.
4 - It provides consumers with more choices and prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage because of a per-existing condition
5 - It requires insurance companies to expend at least 80% of their premiums on actually providing healthcare coverage or refund the difference to their policy holders.

Oh my God, what a nightmare.

what you either can't or won't understand is that some the items mentioned were passed by Republicans. And that the Democrat party has morphed from a centrist orientation to a very liberal one. Although Kennedy, Johnson were democrats they were NOT liberals .. The policies and philosophies of JFK would today resemble conservative more closely than liberal outlook. Furthermore definition of liberal vs conservative changes over time and circumstance. The founding fathers could very well be considered liberal or even revolutionary. The Constitution after all was an excersize in radical change. But today a staunch upholder of that document would be accurately labeled a Conservative. In many ways your entire diatribe is not relevent with current nomenclature.

Blurry--you might try breaking up your narratives into more digestible paragraphs. I do try to read seriously read what you post--long unbroken paragraphs makes the reading a little tougher tun it needs to be.

That out of the way, much of what you say about Lincoln is true, but without the benefit of full context. For example, Lincoln was against extending slavery to the territories--the issues that eventually lend to armed conflict. Or in the case of Kansas, not so eventual.

While true that Lincoln was not a civil rights activist, he must be fairly considered in the context of his time. Just like the Founders, in the context of their time, they were all liberals.

Blurry--you might try breaking up your narratives into more digestible paragraphs. I do try to read seriously read what you post--long unbroken paragraphs makes the reading a little tougher tun it needs to be.

That out of the way, much of what you say about Lincoln is true, but without the benefit of full context. For example, Lincoln was against extending slavery to the territories--the issues that eventually lend to armed conflict. Or in the case of Kansas, not so eventual.

While true that Lincoln was not a civil rights activist, he must be fairly considered in the context of his time. Just like the Founders, in the context of their time, they were all liberals.