One great pillar in the health of a great nation lies in how a leader understands the values and principles of their nation and pushes the state to act in accordance with them to further the state and nation to new territory. President Abraham Lincoln is the leader to look upon how to lead in this manner. Lincoln understood the principles of the Enlightenment of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and he understood that a state and nation must grow and thrive in tandem to allow others in the enterprise who were otherwise left out. Thus, Abraham Lincoln is the prototypical Progressive Conservative.
Lincoln understood the centrality of the Enlightenment’s goals for the recognition of transnational rights of man over unconsented governance and how the state must be formed to prevent such rights from being violated. However, there is an important consideration to note. The precipice wherewith any state falls always centers on its illegitimacy, and its illegitimacy always involves a weak foundation of its values and principles. For a state to be strong, its belief and confidence in its values and principles must be strong, and the state must act in accordance with them. But America the nation held to the rights of all men yet the state allowed the institution of slavery to persist. Thus, the state and nation were at odds. If this contradiction were maintained indefinitely, America the nation would be meaningless and few people would believe in it, inevitably weakening the state and the nation considerably. Lincoln understood this and thus saw war as an immediate agent to preserve the values and principles of the nation and prevent the steel blade and ink pen to tear and bludgeon an already weakened and destitute state to death.
Lincoln sought to conserve the rights of man as an unnegotiable element for the foundation of America with the South. Lincoln proclaimed boldly the inviolability of the rights of all men and argued that its violation renders a state illegitimate. It was a blistering proclamation. Much to the chagrin of Southern intellectuals like George Fitzhugh, such a proclamation meant Lincoln charted unchartable waters. In Fitzhugh’s mind, the law of nature did not proclaim all men to be equal as Jefferson posited, but that some men are more superior than other men. In holding to this, it cannot be reasoned successfully that inferior men have rights, for it is apparent that their condition is animalistic and their life should be one of service to superior men who rule over them. For Fitzhugh, the sentimental ramblings of Jefferson’s pen cannot overturn the stern edicts of nature, and Lincoln’s intrusive breaches of these edicts and his push for war to overturn them only showed the culmination of the Enlightenment’s corruption: bloody combat and war that destroys the state and nation. Lincoln insulted nature through emancipating slaves and the state would die as the penalty. Thus, in proclaiming the rights of man, Lincoln took a huge risk and challenged the Southern intellectuals’ arguments against the Enlightenment’s principles and boldly upheld America’s fierce allegiance to them.
Lincoln was a conservative because he sought to preserve the nation’s foundational principles against the likes of George Fitzhugh and other antebellum Southern intellectuals. He understood that the Declaration of Independence was foundational to America as the nation. He knew that the South was out of step with this tradition and would rather dwell in the pits of hell than entertain the idea that the proclamation that all men were created equal was indeed true. Lincoln understood that not one jot or tittle could be altered or abolished to preserve the Union. The Union would be no more if that were the case. Thus, War was absolutely necessary to preserve those values and principles and no ideas that contradicted it could ever be tolerated or accepted.
Lincoln was a liberal because he sought to progress the Enlightenment’s transnational human rights into radical territory. Lincoln believed in the principle that all men are created equal. There was to be no ugly distinction in mankind. However, Lincoln did this as a matter of principle and not necessarily as a matter for altruism. And he had to do it. Indeed, the rights of man needed to be proclaimed in order to uphold the legitimacy of the state and nation. If the founding of America was based on human rights, then how can the state allow for blacks to have their human rights violated? How can the nation survive when its values and principles are fragmented and weakened? Such a condition will only demonstrate the state and nation’s bankruptcy and enact Thomas Jefferson’s prescriptive words to alter or abolish an illegitimate state to an enthusiastic, marauding populace. Once again, what Lincoln’s radical step did was push the state and nation beyond the constraints of self-contradictory conventions and into new ground for the state and the nation to survive. If Lincoln did not do this, it is almost certain that America would not have survived as a state and nation.
But Lincoln’s vision does not stop with blacks. It must proceed with other groups. It must allow for women to be equal to men, lest we render women less than human and take away their human rights and enslave them to men. This would justify any man imposing their will upon women and controlling them to do whatever they will them to do. This allows for the abuse and injustice to flourish and a passive state to look on with lukewarm sympathy. Lincoln made the first step to extend the enterprise to blacks, but the enterprise must go on to allow the state and nation to go on.
In sum, Abraham Lincoln was a conservative and a liberal. Lincoln was a conservative because he sought to conserve the Enlightenment principles of transnational human rights against the numerous battles, both by the sword and by the pen, against Southerners who sought to destroy them. Lincoln was also a liberal because he extended the recognition and protection of transnational human rights to blacks and sought to extend them even further to fulfill the vision of the Enlightenment. Thus, Lincoln is the father of Progressive Conservatism. Lincoln’s example is what the Progressive Conservative position stands on.