posted
Actually, I'm not even arguing that Lincoln was a progressive. I just take issue with the notion that agreeing with one position of a large cause, even for reasons unrelated to the reasons members of that cause supports the position, constitutes being a member of that cause. It seems bizarrely illogical to me.
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quote:Yes, I note how many of those you've provided yourself, kat.
*twinkle* This is like arguing with my brother. Anyway, time to put up.
quote:"That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or any denomination of Christians in particular." --From the July 31, 1846 Handbill Replying to Charges of Infidelity
"I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion." --From the July 31, 1846 Handbill Replying to Charges of Infidelity
"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong." --From the September 1862 Meditation on the Divine Will
"I am very glad indeed to see you to-night, and yet I will not say I thank you for this call, but I do most sincerely thank Almighty God for the occasion on which you have called." --From the July 7, 1864 Response to a Serenade
"If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God." --From the April 4, 1864 Letter to Albert Hodges
"We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein." --From the September 4, 1864 Letter to Eliza Gurney
These are all from Lincoln. He could have been blowing smoke then, or he could have been blowing smoke earlier in his life, he could have been a complex individual with a continually-changing understanding and relationship with God, or he could have been full of crap for most of his life.
Which quotes a historian chooses to believe are sincere and which are pandering - what history is espoused - reveals more about the historian than the subject.
In any case, reducing it to saying that Lincoln was an atheist is simplistic, at best. At worst, it is false and self-serving.
I admit I don't know much about the history of the Civil War and its players from the Northern side. Is socially progressive a term they used for themselves, or is it something historians coined to classify them?
posted
My personal belief (which has nothing to do with whatever religion he believed in) was that Lincoln was often mentally ill near the end of his life (though I do not feel this affected his intellect so much as his emotions), and I think that comes out in much of his writings. He was a tortured soul.
Note that I am still not arguing Lincoln was an atheist (though I would certainly argue for weak agnosticism, which works with your quotations), I was saying your statement about the lack of evidence was incorrect.
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It may be fair to say I'm not conservative as it's being practiced now by the largest group of self-identified conservatives in power. I'd argue against such an assertion, but it's at least feasible.
I'm not sure what the l/L distinction signifies to you, but unless you're hearkening back to classic liberalism ala Locke, I'm not sure how I can be liberal in any political sense of the word.
If you mean a more everyday usage of the word, I guess it could apply. But I wouldn't put that near the top of the list of adjectives describing me.
Dagonee P.S., I'm not offended at all - I'm just genuinely intrigued and curious as to your usage.
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posted
You still haven't produced any, besides an assurance that you could.
Dag: I'm so annoyed by the co-opting of the term liberal to represent a certain group of iron-clad and verociously-rigid political beliefs that I refuse to use it that way. I mean liberal in the classic sense.
Ascribing to people a label corresponding to a broad group of beliefs with a common motivation due to a single common position seems to make that label useless, and I see little point in using labels in a way which makes them useless.
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posted
Uh, Kat, that statement about his religion is certainly evidence, its just not conclusive evidence. There's a big difference.
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posted
I should point out the people who seem to have co-opted the term liberal for that usage seem to be the Republicans . . .
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quote:Dag: I'm so annoyed by the co-opting of the term liberal to represent a certain group of iron-clad and verociously-rigid political beliefs that I refuse to use it that way. I mean liberal in the classic sense.
OK. I just wouldn't want to have any rumors started.
I'd still like to see a list of socially progressive "causes" or what constitutes a progressive orientation in the antebellum era. I'm not at all sure what you guys mean when you use the term.
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posted
Who cares who, I've been challenging an idea I consider silly, which I have stated so many times I see no need to repeat it. There is no "anti-katie" crusade.
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posted
I don't like cohesive theories, I find them all far too concerned with being unified over being right or useful.
I doubt there is any cohesive theory of humanity excepting humanity itself.
Give me a nice, perhaps contradictory when taken to extremes, set of notions which when applied to the real world are right and useful over a cohesive theory any day.
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quote: I'm not saying its all or nothing, but it sure sounds like you're saying its anything is everything, kat.
It seems you're saying that some theoretical person who holds a position in common with each major movement at a time (and I've known people so conflicted) is a member of all those movements, which sounds like a bizarre way to classify people.
For instance, Dagonee is a strong proponent of gay marriage (edit: though as a secular institution, but still), a commonly liberal position, but I think it would be silly to call him a liberal.
incoherent?
Everything else I've been talking about in this thread are just side tidbits of interest. That up there's the only, consistent and coherent opinion I've devoted any serious space to arguing.
Plus, I think I've got a pretty good standing on this board as far as the coherency of my arguments goes, so your opinion on the matter doesn't really impact me.
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posted
I'd bet because its mildly amusing thinking of Lincoln as an LDS member and that's the first site he came up with mentioning it . . .
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I'm not saying you should be persuaded because of it, that would be an appeal to authority, I'm saying I don't care you're saying I'm incoherent because of it, which is not. An important difference.
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It's fairly funny, but maybe it wasn't a good thing to link to from Hatrack.
Seriously - with the exception of our good doctors, no one gets get to coast on shoddy evidence because they imagine they produced good evidence in the past. Especially since I've seen you BS voluminously.
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I think everything would be better if you answered Dag's question he's so politely asked several times.
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It was actually down the list. I couldn't find any pro-LDS sites that mentioned the possibility of Lincoln having been baptised by proxy. At least with this site you don't get the anti-LDS stuff until the lower half of the page.
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posted
My question is probably more aimed at Squicky, since he's the one who introduced the distinction. I haven't taken history in a decade and a half, and I'm wondering what he includes under the term.
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posted
Mainly I've been somewhat wrapped up in another discussion, another is that I wasn't interested in arguing the position, as I noted in my first response.
Social progressivism is a term that has been projected back in time, from the period it became popular as a political description around the turn into the 20th century to positions held before the civil war. This is in part due to a particular perspective on Lincoln that became popular around the time -- Tarbell's biography, in particular, spurred this notion.
There is considerable foundation. For instance, Lincoln acting like a social progressive chose to use an income tax to fund the war, a (non-coincidentally) progressive income tax. He was famously for considering the USA as a cohesive whole, which is a classic progressive stance. Lincoln also supported movements towards workers' rights in his writings, though he never took a significant political stand on the issue. In an interesting side note, Harry Turtledove was able to envision Lincoln as a socialist after the South won (in an alternate history) using primarily rearranged snippets of Lincoln's actual writings. Lincoln at the very least used quite progressive rhetoric at times.
For Progressives in general before the civil war, though, their positions were often more radical. Strong workers' rights, extreme "Americanism" (meaning strong integration of immigrants into america, emphasizing national loyalty and the cohesion of the union), the support of strong civil institutions through tax dollars (meaning things similar to better business bureaus and the like; progressivism was primarily a city movement in comparison to the somewhat similar populist movement in more rural areas).
Social progressivism is also commonly associated with a notion of "removing corruption", something that closely fits with Lincoln's campaign rhetoric, though at that time nearly every politician had that somewhere in his rallying cry .
quote: It may be fair to say I'm not conservative as it's being practiced now by the largest group of self-identified conservatives in power. I'd argue against such an assertion, but it's at least feasible.
thats ok, I have always thought of myself as conservative...but was recently told by a fellow graduate student that she thought of me as liberal...or perhaps moderate largely because I oppose the death penalty. Of course I also oppose abortion...but she said my reasons for opposing both (support of life in both situations) fit the liberal ideology, whatever that means. She also said the fact that I have friends all all ends of the political spectrum made me liberal as well. It sort of puzzled me that she thought it would be impossible for a "true" conservative to have a diverse group of friends...but I guess everyone has their opinions on the labels that should be used.
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posted
Maybe now those tubular-food-control zealots will realize that any food can be dangerous in the wrong hands.
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posted
I have heard claims that Lincoln belonged to Barton Stone's movement (one of the groups that became part of the churches of Christ) based on his statements against denominations and a membership by his parents. I don't recall where I found the information right now, but I will look for it. (I also don't believe it, for a number of reasons; the most important is that Stone's movement included a number of very vocal anarchists who would have made an issue of his presidency, the way David Lipscomb did with Garfield.)
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posted
"He could have been blowing smoke then, or he could have been blowing smoke earlier in his life..."
Katie, as I said, a quick Google brings up considerable evidence that Lincoln confided to friends and even casual acquaintances that many of his mentions of God were done to placate the "fools." Given that his Secretary of State was a passionate evangelical and kept inserting references to God into released text without his permission -- and given that Lincoln later reprimanded Seward for this and, quite remarkably, declared that anything his Secretary of State released was to be reviewed prior to publication to avoid "excessive reference to Deity," I think it's likely that the vast majority of Lincoln's life was spent paying lip service to religion as an opiate for the masses.
He may have experienced some sort of religious conversion much later in life -- but on this we only have the word of his wife, who's a very unreliable source.
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Combining this page with Gizoogle gives us this:
quote: Thizzay I am not a memba of any Christian Church, is true; but I hizzle neva denied tha trizzuth of tha Scriptures; n I hizzy playa spoken wit intentional diss of religion in general, or any denominizzles of Christians in particizzles...
posted
I found this in a fairly quick google search
quote: He wrote: "When I left Springfield, I asked the people to pray for me; I was not a Christian. When I buried my son—the severest trial of my life - I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg, and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ."
posted
Search for "Album-Immortelles" on this page. The original source book is known to attribute some false quotations to Lincoln, and the source for the quotation that the book gives is an anonymous illinois clergyman.
Though I haven't read it all yet, that page includes a lot of interesting looks at Lincoln's religious views.
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