@Aljosa23: Lincoln was a man of progress. He was so progressive, that he was supported and cheered by Karl Marx. The man whose ideas and writings lead to the deaths of millions worldwide. Such progress.
Lulz where to begin?
Amazing how you try to demonize Lincoln for his views on Africans yet you list as your number one favorite US president a slave owner whose most notable accomplishment is most definitely annexing Texas which in turn resulted in the practice of slavery exploding in the newly created state. You also list another slave owner, Thomas Jefferson, who although was a gifted advocate for certain libertarian ideals, was a president - like all presidents both before and after him - that didn't govern in accordance to his self-proclaimed political principles. Jefferson was the first president to get the ball rolling on the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, which is something I would personally describe as very un-libertarian. He also used executive power to pursue the Louisiana Purchase, an action that really doesn't jive with the Jeffersonian idea of decentralized power and states rights.
And then you have the audacity to attribute the deaths of millions upon millions of people in the 20th century to a man who died in 1883 (I should also add that towards the end of his life, Marx harshly criticized and distanced himself from those who labeled themselves "marxists"), and somehow you go even farther and use these deaths as a criticism against Abraham Lincoln.
Libertarians need to get their heads out of the past and stop idolizing long dead American politicians, especially long dead American presidents, many of whom owned slaves and all of whom agreed on the idea of manifest destiny and creating an American empire. You won't find your libertarian messiah among the ghosts of the oval office. A libertarian making a list of their favorite US presidents is like an abolitionist making a list of their favorite slave owners.
Also, I suggest you do yourself a service and educate yourself on American history. Just by skimming your OP I found a handful of historical errors and misrepresentations - for example I would hardly classify George Washington's foreign policy as "neutral", just look at what he did in Haiti during the Haitian revolution.
Yes, most of these people had slaves. Everyone had slaves during the old days. Westerners weren't the only ones to hold slaves. The Persians, Indians, Native Americans, the Chinese, and even the Africans held slaves. I've never said that any of these presidents were perfect. Each of them have committed mistakes, and some that were unjustifiably cruel (such as Andrew Jackson's forceful creation of the Indian Removal Act). But each have committed to the cause of liberty in some way and fashion. Most have opposed militarily intervene, or causing pointless wars. Even George Washington was wise enough to avoid conflict between the British and the French. Martin Van Buren even created a third-party (Free-Soil) that was committed to abolishing slavery.
How come America was the only civilized country to start war over slavery? Even Spain and Portugal, two nations that had triple the amount of slaves than of any nation, abolished the practice of slavery peacefully. Lincoln was opposed to slavery on principle, but he had no intentions of ending slavery. He even said that he would not interfere with institution of slavery in the states (which was a lie). The "Emancipation Proclamation" was a war effort that only freed slaves in areas he had no jurisdiction to do so, in order to goat the Confederates into surrendering to the federal government. Lincoln also deported freed slaves to Haiti and Liberia, which had pro-slavery laws.
Abraham Lincoln was committed to centralizing the U.S. government, in a country that was founded under the voluntary union of states (which Alexis de Tocqueville even stated in "Democracy in America). I used to be a Liberal, until I realized that most liberals are bloodthirsty for war and imperialism as Neoconservatives. What happened to the anti-war Left? Obama's foreign-policy isn't so much different than Bush's, he invaded Libya and continues to drone strikes civilians across the Middle-east. Obongo nearly started World War III by attempting to bomb Syria. At least Libertarians strongly oppose military intervention and wars, where as Libtards flourish them if it is for their own interests.
If you think that Lincoln didn't start the war, listen to what an lobbyist for Israel (the only country that has turned America into its bitch) has to say about it. He literally confirms Lincoln intentionally initiated the Civil War.
No, Lincoln and the Republican party are mostly to fault for the war. His relief squadron ensure that'd happen.
http://www.tulane.edu/~sumter/Reflections/LinWar.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/08/thomas-dilorenzo/the-liefare-warfare-state/
The South's primary reason for succession was over taxation. The protective tariffs hampered Southern industries, as they were forced to pay 87% federal tax revenue. It was done to protect domestic and manufacturing industries in the North, while they had largely unpaid debts. The U.S. was founded on succession, even pro-federalists such as John Quincy Adams supported succession. Slavery wasn't the issue behind the Confederates, it was economics. And no, Libertarians aren't nihilistic. In fact, Libertarians were the original Liberals, the Classical Liberals, until the Progressive Era corrupted its meaning. We simply believe in persona responsibility, self-reliance, individualism, voluntary association, and self-preservation.
At least we can both agree on the hypocrisy of Liberalism (the Progressive kind).
This idea that libertarians are the "OG" liberals is a fiction. Liberals in pre-industrial America lived in a different world with different issues. A political ideology is not a static set of policy recommendations, it's (ideally) a specific tendency towards solving specific contemporary problems facing society. Liberalism in particular has always been concerned about issues of equality (something libertarians really don't give a shit about) and freedom not only in relation to one's government but also in relation to one's employer (something libertarians also don't give a shit about).
You can't take the expressed policies of 18th century politicians and activists living in a pre-capitalist world and extrapolate that into support for those same policies in the 21st century. The general idiocy of using long dead politicians to advance one's argument aside, there's good reason to believe that people like Thomas Jefferson would be vehemently anti-capitalist if they lived today; he wrote on at least one occasion, realizing the impending rise of industry, that he hoped to crush the corporations of his time in their infancy before they became too powerful. Jefferson was a man living in a feudal world - that's all he knew. It was the eventual destruction of this world at the end of the civil war that got Karl Marx's attention - he praised Lincoln not because he thought the union was some socialist utopia - quite the opposite, he praised Lincoln because he saw the civil war in purely class terms, with the industrial capitalists of the north overthrowing the feudal aristocrats of the south.
And you can't on one hand say that the primary issue that led to the formation of the CSA was economics yet deny that slavery wasn't an issue. The south had a slave based economy!
Moreover, why libertarians decide to waste so much time and energy spouting neo-confederate revisionist history about the civil war is beyond me. Tell me, what region of the country had a freer society in the year 1860, the industrial north or the feudal south? In which society would you have rather been at the bottom of the social ladder? There is no greater tyranny than the institution of chattel slavery and yet libertarians when talking about the civil war only seem to talk about how Lincoln was this oppressive dictator while conveniently being quiet about the fact that a third of the population of the "country" that he was fighting was literally in chains.
You still seem to ignore the fact that Lincoln caused a false flag to provoke the war.
Besides, we should continue this argument later when I create the "Who are your least favorite U.S. Presidents" list. I foolishly went off topic by sharing my views on Lincoln, when I should have saved it for my next thread. We should stay on topic about our favorite presidents. Just share your list of favorite U.S. presidents. And no, I won't argue against your for having Lincoln as one of them.
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