Dimensions
162 x 236 x 25mm
How an Ambitious Young Railsplitter Saved the AmericanDream--and How We Can Do It Again
Barack Obama went out of his way to identify himself with his fellow Illinoisian during his campaign. But Abraham Lincoln was no liberal. The founder of the Republican Party believed in a small but active government, working to support equality of economic opportunity. After all, his own rise to power was predicated on the wide-open opportunities afforded by frontier society. Young Lincoln educated himself in an environment characterised by mind-numbing labour, horrifying brutishness, and ignorant preachers and teachers. Unusually gifted, Lincoln wanted to rise from these humble origins; his raw and grasping ambition and his love of the gritty details and seamy underside of both business and politics allowed him to do so. He therefore saw our founding documents as a warrant for striving and ambitious men like himself who aspired to rise to the founders' level of wealth and privilege. What's more, he devoted his career to creating the conditions for others to do so. This commitment to individual mobility within a free society founded on equality of opportunity is the essence of Lincoln's political ideology.
Today, America faces social and economic challenges that many conservatives want to meet with one solution: cutting government. In PARTY OF LINCOLN, NATIONAL REVIEW editor Rich Lowry reminds us that our goal should be not just the preservation of a free market, but the creation of a society that allows individuals to make the most of that freedom.
