The Party of Lincoln?

When Republicans who don't like Donald Trump want to show how much they don't like him, they say he is not worthy of the "party of Lincoln." But the party of Lincoln was the big-government party of protectionism, industrial policy, civil-liberties violations, and war. Lincoln was even ready to enforce slavery even though he knew it was wrong.

[Cross-posted at The Libertarian Institute.]

Proving Too Much?

• “The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves.” –Barack Obama, quoting Abraham Lincoln
• “[N]ot a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make [a pencil].” –Leonard Read, “I, Pencil”
• Therefore, making pencils — and, by implication, everything else — is a legitimate object of government.

What’s wrong with this argument?

Cross-posted at Anything Peaceful.

Lincoln

My friend Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, a Civil War scholar as well as an economist and economic historian, has written a spot-on op-ed about Abraham Lincoln in the Chicago Tribune. I highly recommend it.