Two very reviled figures by the Far Right, Teabaggers and segments of the Deep South. They weren’t perfect people but both helped human progress and did what they could to make the world a better place.
Lincoln resided in my old hometown, what a secret. The Civil War definitely did a lot of good toward covering up what could’ve been a rather uneventful, mediocre presidency. However, it takes a crisis to get many to show what they’re made of. To his numerous detractors who like to throw around accusations such as dictator, I ask you this, does the Constitution have instructions on what to do in case of civil war? It doesn’t excuse Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus much like Dubious establishing Gitmo. I think it showed what desperate 19th century thinking gets you. As for the revelations about Honest Abe originally being the equivalent of a corporate lawyer defending the railroads before he took up politics. I say, good job catching up on what many of us who dove deeper to study history long ago already knew. When I was growing up, I learned that Lincoln was a clever guy, kind of a mooch; he often came to visit around dinner time to get a free meal, borrow a book to get an excuse to drop by later, etc. Certainly sounds like the negative stereotype of a lawyer to me. Plus his legal expertise in corporate matters didn’t mean he was necessarily unqualified nor lacking a conscience to govern; he personally found slavery repugnant. Case in point recently? Old Man Joe Kennedy was the first SEC Commissioner and he did it pretty well much to his critics’ shock.
Fellow Republicans shouldn’t be surprised over Lincoln’s initial racism neither. He did join the GOP because the Whigs weren’t doing enough to defeat the Democrats then. In Lincoln’s day and area, the Dems weren’t the party of slavery, they were the party of those job-stealing Irish Catholics and Polish Jews up in Chicago. Explains why the GOP allied themselves with the Free Soilers and Know Nothings, the 19th Century’s Teabaggers and LaRouchites, to get enough votes to be viable. I think there were cracks in his attitudes after seeing how brave the Black American soldiers were and patriotic the immigrants were. Allegedly, my Irish ancestors helped Lincoln campaign around Wapella and Clinton, IL. Mom had an newspaper article to prove it.
Darwin remains at the center of the debate between those who understand Science and the ignorant. Sadly, the latter have been gaining momentum since the coronation of Reagan. Not all religious (aka spiritual) people are in the latter camp because even I agree the contradictory aspects can be reconciled. When the Vatican says they side with Team Evolution, it makes the batty Christians appear crazier.
It is weird how the concerns changed too. The panic over the Scopes Trial’s outcome wasn’t over evolution’s validity. The fear was Darwin’s work being used as a blueprint for a eugenics program. Seems reasonable given how America’s Robber Barons from the previous century hijacked his work to justify the great economic inequality they created, aka Social Darwinism. Some things never change too. Today’s critics continue to practice this pseudo science, they just reworded the policy’s source.