Some controversies still linger about the American Civil War, but after 150 years, the basics are clear, right? Well, not really. We have forgotten a lot
As Dr. Murray Rothbard once famously said of the Great Depression: "The guilt for the Great Depression must, at long last, be lifted from the shoulders of the free-market economy and placed where it properly belongs: at the doors of politicians, bureaucrats, and the mass of enlightened economists."
Early Progressives co-opted Abraham Lincoln’s legacy to justify their program of expansive government powers over American life. Conservative and libertarian thinking today has assumed, that the Progressives’ appropriation of Lincoln was legitimate.
Abraham Lincoln understood emancipation not as the satisfaction ofa "spirit" overriding the law, nor as the moment of fusion betweenthe Constitution and absolute moral theory, but as a goal to beachieved through prudential means so that worthwhile consequencesmight result. In Lincoln, we have our best glimpse of prudence in aliberal democracy.