Louisiana requires "In God We Trust"

Iron_Merc said:

One thing is for certain, democrats certainly didn't stand for conservative, republican values personified by Lincoln.

But we are getting off track here. In regards to IN GOD WE TRUST its perfectly legal.

Take a look at this:

Accommodationism - Wikipedia

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By the standards of the day Lincoln was about as far from a conservative as you could get. He corresponded with Karl Marx himself.

ataraxia said:

So how do you explain how the south went from being solidly Democrat to solidly conservative in the course of a single decade in the 1960s, at the same time the civil rights movement took place? They suddenly saw the error of their ways, just in time to vote for George Wallace?

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When faced with the sobering reality that Democrats supported slavery, started the Civil War when the abolitionist Republican Party won the Presidency, established the Ku Klux Klan to brutalize newly freed slaves and keep them from voting, opposed the Civil Rights Movement, modern-day liberals reflexively perpetuate rather pernicious myth--that the racist southern Democrats of the 1950s and 1960s became Republicans, leading to the so-called "switch" of the parties.

In fact, voting patterns in the South didn't really change all that much after the Civil Rights era. Democrats still dominated Senate, House, and gubernatorial elections for decades afterward. Alabama, for example, didn't elect a Republican governor until 1986. Mississippi didn't elect one until 1991. Georgia didn't elect one until 2002.

In Our Creator We Trust — as per The Creator being used in our Constitution and Declaration of Independence

Iron_Merc said:

Jefferson could be considered conservative in many respects. But did he know God? We don't know, but he certainly did follow after a moral code. Here is an interesting point of view from Quincy Adams in reference to Jefferson on the issue of slavery.

Over the years, claims of hypocrisy have been thrown Jefferson's way over the issue of slavery, but none other than President John Quincy Adams pointed out the logical consistency of Jefferson's views.(Quincy Adams was a lifelong, die-hard abolitionist.) Adams said:
The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented by all the southern patriots of the Revolution; by no one with deeper and more unalterable conviction than by the author of the Declaration himself. No charge of insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence, slavery, in common with every other mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth. Such was the undoubting conviction of Jefferson to his dying day. In the Memoir of His Life, written at the age of seventy-seven, he gave to his countrymen the solemn and emphatic warning that the day was not distant when they must hear and adopt the general emancipation of their slaves.[61]

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Sure. But now you are losing the topic.

The topic was that most politicians talk in religious terms in public, but were clearly not at all religious based on their private writings. Lincoln and Jefferson were no exceptions. You cannot have a Lincoln who expressly says "The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession" and claim he was a born-again Christian, just because of some public addresses in which he spoke in religious terms. You realize that makes you not have any credibility, right?

Tigerace117 said:

By the standards of the day Lincoln was about as far from a conservative as you could get. He corresponded with Karl Marx himself.

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I'm sorry but this is so far from the truth. Really, do your research. you are getting BAD information.

Historian David Hackett Fischer stresses Lincoln's conservative views. In the 1850s, "Lincoln was a prosperous corporate lawyer, and a member of the conservative Whig party for many years." He promoted business interests, especially banks, canals, railroads, and factories. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln explicitly appealed to conservatives. In 1859, he explained what he meant by conservatism in terms of fealty to the original intent of the Founding Fathers:

"The chief and real purpose of the Republican party is eminently conservative. It proposes nothing save and except to restore this government to its original tone in regard to this element of slavery, and there to maintain it, looking for no further change in reference to it than that which the original framers of the Government themselves expected and looked forward to."

Iron_Merc said:

When faced with the sobering reality that Democrats supported slavery, started the Civil War when the abolitionist Republican Party won the Presidency, established the Ku Klux Klan to brutalize newly freed slaves and keep them from voting, opposed the Civil Rights Movement, modern-day liberals reflexively perpetuate rather pernicious myth--that the racist southern Democrats of the 1950s and 1960s became Republicans, leading to the so-called "switch" of the parties.

In fact, voting patterns in the South didn't really change all that much after the Civil Rights era. Democrats still dominated Senate, House, and gubernatorial elections for decades afterward. Alabama, for example, didn't elect a Republican governor until 1986. Mississippi didn't elect one until 1991. Georgia didn't elect one until 2002.

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So you are saying the chief Republican party strategists of the time were mistaken in their strategizing?

"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."
-Kevin Phillips, chief Republican Party strategist and campaign advisor to Richard Nixon, 1968

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Oh, don't forget Lee Atwater, Reagan's chief political strategist, here in an interview in 1980:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 [...] and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

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ataraxia said:

So you are saying the chief Republican party strategists of the time were mistaken in their strategizing?

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Their "strategizing" doesn't matter. The South still generally elected Democrats until the 1990s. Even in Presidential elections, they tended to go with the national winners.

The "big switch" is a myth. A fairy tale.

ataraxia said:

Sure. But now you are losing the topic.

The topic was that most politicians talk in religious terms in public, but were clearly not at all religious based on their private writings. Lincoln and Jefferson were no exceptions. You cannot have a Lincoln who expressly says "The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession" and claim he was a born-again Christian, just because of some public addresses in which he spoke in religious terms. You realize that makes you not have any credibility, right?

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Abraham Lincoln is sometimes claimed to have been an atheist because of the way he spoke about Christianity early in his life. His religious views later in life are a controversial matter, but the common consensus among historians is that he was a man of deep faith.

Harshaw said:

Their "strategizing" doesn't matter. The South still generally elected Democrats until the 1990s. Even in Presidential elections, they tended to go with the national winners.

The "big switch" is a myth. A fairy tale.

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So you are saying you know more about this than the chief political strategists of the Republican Party itself?

Iron_Merc said:

Abraham Lincoln is sometimes claimed to have been an atheist because of the way he spoke about Christianity early in his life. His religious views later in life are a controversial matter, but the common consensus among historians is that he was a man of deep faith.

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But not Christian

Iron_Merc said:

Abraham Lincoln is sometimes claimed to have been an atheist because of the way he spoke about Christianity early in his life. His religious views later in life are a controversial matter, but the common consensus among historians is that he was a man of deep faith.

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Never heard that. Which historians?

ataraxia said:

Never heard that. Which historians?

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Just check this out for yourself and why don't you play historian for us?
At the same time, the War was not going well for the Union. Lincoln said, "I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go." Later, as he was preparing to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln said, "I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee was driven back from Maryland I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves."

Later, while trying to put into words, from a divine perspective, the necessity of the Civil War, he wrote:
"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party -- and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true -- that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds."
In 1863, after the Battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln issued the first Federally mandated Thanksgiving Day to be kept on the last Thursday in November. Reflecting on the successes of the past year, Lincoln said:
"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."
In 1864, some former slaves in Maryland presented Lincoln with a gift of a Bible. Lincoln replied:
"In regard to this great book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it."
In September 1864, Lincoln, placing the Civil War squarely within a divine province, wrote in a letter to a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers),
"The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail accurately to perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise...we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains. Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay."

Harshaw said:

Their "strategizing" doesn't matter. The South still generally elected Democrats until the 1990s. Even in Presidential elections, they tended to go with the national winners.

The "big switch" is a myth. A fairy tale.

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So you are saying that the South did not go from voting heavily Democratic to voting heavily Republican? Because there is no historical controversy there.

The question is just: why?

Rev. James Armstrong Reed, in preparing his 1873 lectures on the religion of Lincoln, asked a number of people if there was any evidence of Lincoln being an infidel in his later life. The reply from Phineas Gurley, pastor of the same New York Avenue Presbyterian Church while Lincoln was an attender, to Reed's question was:
"I do not believe a word of it. It could not have been true of him while here, for I have had frequent and intimate conversations with him on the subject of the Bible and the Christian religion, when he could have had no motive to deceive me, and I considered him sound not only on the truth of the Christian religion but on all its fundamental doctrines and teaching. And more than that: in the latter days of his chastened and weary life, after the death of his son Willie, and his visit to the battle-field of Gettysburg, he said, with tears in his eyes, that he had lost confidence in everything but God, and that he now believed his heart was changed, and that he loved the Saviour, and, if he was not deceived in himself, it was his intention soon to make a profession of religion"

Regarding his intention to join a church, according to an affidavit signed under oath in Essex County, New Jersey, February 15, 1928, by Mrs. Sidney I. Lauck, then a very old woman, Mrs. Lauck said:
"After Mr. Lincoln's death, Dr. Gurley told me that Mr. Lincoln had made all the necessary arrangements with him and the Session of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church to be received into the membership of the said church, by confession of his faith in Christ, on the Easter Sunday following the Friday night when Mr. Lincoln was assassinated."

Noah Brooks, a newspaperman, and a friend and biographer of Lincoln's, in reply to Reed's inquiry if there was any truth to claims that Lincoln was an infidel, stated:
"In addition to what has appeared from my pen, I will state that I have had many conversations with Mr. Lincoln, which were more or less of a religious character, and while I never tried to draw anything like a statement of his views from him, yet he freely expressed himself to me as having 'a hope of blessed immortality through Jesus Christ.' His views seemed to settle so naturally around that statement, that I considered no other necessary. His language seemed not that of an inquirer, but of one who had a prior settled belief in the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion. Once or twice, speaking to me of the change which had come upon him, he said, while he could not fix any definite time, yet it was after he came here, and I am very positive that in his own mind he identified it with about the time of Willie's death. He said, too, that after he went to the White House he kept up the habit of daily prayer. Sometimes he said it was only ten words, but those ten words he had. There is no possible reason to suppose that Mr. Lincoln would ever deceive me as to his religious sentiments. In many conversations with him, I absorbed the firm conviction that Mr. Lincoln was at heart a Christian man, believed in the Savior, and was seriously considering the step which would formally connect him with the visible church on earth. Certainly, any suggestion as to Mr. Lincoln's skepticism or Infidelity, to me who knew him intimately from 1862 till the time of his death, is a monstrous fiction -- a shocking perversion."

Of Lincoln's increasing religious views during this time, Lincoln's widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, said,
"A man, who never took the name of the Maker in vain, who always read his Bible diligently, who never failed to rely on God's promises & looked upon Him for protection, surely such a man as this, could not have been a disbeliever, or any other than what he was, a true Christian gentleman....From the time of the death of our little Edward, I believe my husband's heart was directed towards religion & as time passed on - when Mr. Lincoln became elevated to Office...then indeed to my knowledge - did his great heart go up daily, hourly, in prayer to God - for his sustaining power. When too - the overwhelming sorrow came upon us, our beautiful bright angelic boy, Willie was called away from us, to his Heavenly Home, with God's chastising hand upon us - he turned his heart to Christ —"

ataraxia said:

So you are saying that the South did not go from voting heavily Democratic to voting heavily Republican? Because there is no historical controversy there.

The question is just: why?

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I'm not saying that. It did, but it happened slowly, very slowly.

Iron_Merc said:

I'm sorry but this is so far from the truth. Really, do your research. you are getting BAD information.

Historian David Hackett Fischer stresses Lincoln's conservative views. In the 1850s, "Lincoln was a prosperous corporate lawyer, and a member of the conservative Whig party for many years." He promoted business interests, especially banks, canals, railroads, and factories. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln explicitly appealed to conservatives. In 1859, he explained what he meant by conservatism in terms of fealty to the original intent of the Founding Fathers:

"The chief and real purpose of the Republican party is eminently conservative. It proposes nothing save and except to restore this government to its original tone in regard to this element of slavery, and there to maintain it, looking for no further change in reference to it than that which the original framers of the Government themselves expected and looked forward to."

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The guy who doesn’t know that southern democrats were conservatives wants to claim others have bad information?:roll:

Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx in Dialogue - Allan Kulikoff - Oxford University Press

Lincoln and Marx

https://www.washingtonpost.com/hist...rx-no-not-aoc-abraham-lincoln/?outputType=amp

Conservatives, on the other hand, jumped up board to create three treasonous “copperhead” faction and tried to force the US to make peace with the Confederacy in 1864.

ataraxia said:

So you are saying you know more about this than the chief political strategists of the Republican Party itself?

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I'm saying I know the facts of what happened.

Iron_Merc said:

Just check this out for yourself and why don't you play historian for us?
At the same time, the War was not going well for the Union. Lincoln said, "I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go." Later, as he was preparing to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln said, "I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee was driven back from Maryland I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves."

Later, while trying to put into words, from a divine perspective, the necessity of the Civil War, he wrote:
"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party -- and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true -- that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds."
In 1863, after the Battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln issued the first Federally mandated Thanksgiving Day to be kept on the last Thursday in November. Reflecting on the successes of the past year, Lincoln said:
"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."
In 1864, some former slaves in Maryland presented Lincoln with a gift of a Bible. Lincoln replied:
"In regard to this great book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it."
In September 1864, Lincoln, placing the Civil War squarely within a divine province, wrote in a letter to a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers),
"The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail accurately to perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise...we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains. Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay."

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So this, along with his sentiments on Christianity, suggests that Lincoln may have been, at best, a deist, just like Jefferson and many of the other founding fathers.

Most deists were very much anti-Christian. One of the most well known was Thomas Payne. Listen to him talk about "God", but AGAINST Christianity:

“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

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These guys' "God" was not the God of the Bible.

Tigerace117 said:

The guy who doesn’t know that southern democrats were conservatives wants to claim others have bad information?:roll:

Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx in Dialogue - Allan Kulikoff - Oxford University Press

Lincoln and Marx

https://www.washingtonpost.com/hist...rx-no-not-aoc-abraham-lincoln/?outputType=amp

Conservatives, on the other hand, jumped up board to create three treasonous “copperhead” faction and tried to force the US to make peace with the Confederacy in 1864.

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Southern democrats, conservative? No, you just embrace the liberal revisionists history of the United States.

ataraxia said:

So this, along with his sentiments on Christianity, suggests that Lincoln may have been, at best, a deist, just like Jefferson and many of the other founding fathers.

Most deists were very much anti-Christian. One of the most well known was Thomas Payne. Listen to him talk about "God", but AGAINST Christianity:



These guys' "God" was not the God of the Bible.

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At best a born again Christian, which he was. That quote you used against him was said earlier in his life, before God transformed him

Iron_Merc said:

At best a born again Christian, which he was. That quote you used against him was said earlier in his life, before God transformed him

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Prove it

The facts are this. Liberals have a very difficult time acknowledging the conservative values stem from the Christian belief structure.

Harshaw said:

I'm saying I know the facts of what happened.

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Here are the facts:

"In American politics, the Southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans.[1][2][3] As the civil rights movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s visibly deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern United States, Republican politicians such as presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative voters in the South who had traditionally supported the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. It also helped to push the Republican Party much more to the right.[4]"
Southern strategy - Wikipedia

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