On Lincoln Again

Daniel Larison has a few true things to say about Lincoln

A modern conservative appropriation of Lincoln seems mistaken to me since, obviously, I think Lincoln’s politics are the antithesis of the decentralist, distributist-cum-populist tradition that properly makes up what best approximates a native conservative tradition in America. If judged according to Burkean hostility to Jacobinism and “armed doctrines” generally, Lincoln would have to be classified as an enemy of the permanent things....Lincoln represents the tendency to uproot, level or destroy pretty much everything that a great many traditional conservatives believe that we should be conserving.

This is of course a nice way of saying what most of us already know - Lincoln was a murderous, lying, tyrant; he was certainly not a conservative however the neocon's probably find him and his actions as something to be admired. That of course is more a commentary on their own flaws than anything remarkable about Lincoln himself.