Get your own ideology, that one's taken.

I'm constantly frustrated by people's attempts to project their political views on previous generation's great politicians. Republicans want to bring up Lincoln and Hamilton, Democrats want to bring up Lincoln and Jefferson, both groups not realizing that the politics of their day and age made the terms “liberal” and “conservative” mean entirely different things than they do today. The only consistent definition of these terms is that liberals support change and conservatives oppose it.

Jefferson was a Democrat when that party represented agricultural and decentralization interests. His main philosophical opponent was Hamilton, who represented urbanization, government regulation and centralization. Jefferson was a political liberal when it came to the opposition of monarchy and decentralization of government power, but was conservative on economic issues such as government regulation of finances and promotion of agriculture over industrialization. Jefferson did not promote equality of races and did not support suffrage to groups other than white, property-owning adult males. Aside from his opposition to monarchy, and archaic position these days, he would not identify with the Democratic party of today. Hamilton was a political conservative when it came to government power, preferring centralization of government power to oppose the selfishness of individual State interests. He was an economic liberal when it came to the issues of supporting government regulation of commerce, and supporting urbanization and industrialization over agricultural interests. While these figure may be the prototypes of the current Democrat/Republican ideological split, their beliefs at the time they operated do not necessitate a direct agreement with the ideological stands of today's American political parties.

Lincoln's domestic policies and personal ideology has been largely lost in the mists of history due to his entire administration's time being dedicated to the preservation of the union. Lincoln was a Republican when that party represented urban areas and a strong federal government, while his opposition Democrats represented the countryside and decentralization interests. Lincoln, like the vast majority of white Americans (probably close to 99%, barring only some extreme religious factions) at the time of his election was a racist. He dropped the N-bomb like it was going out of style, he didn't think that African-Americans were capable of the same things as white Americans. He initially opposed the creation of black regiments in The Civil War, and it's likely only the exemplary performance of these units that softened his views. His economic ideas, which never saw the light of day during his administration due to preoccupation with the war, were decidedly proto-socialist. Lincoln was ardently anti-corporation and supported a more equitable distribution of wealth. Lincoln, taken as a whole man with the entirety of his beliefs, was not an ideal figure for either current party to hold up as “their's”.

So am I insisting people should stop quoting or citing these important political figures? Not in the slightest. What bothers me is when a group tries to claim one of these men as “ours and not their's” None of these ideologies fits neatly on top of or into your ideology. Their ideas are to be used and adapted by the current generation so that we all don't have to start from scratch, not to be directly emulated. Not that most people could accurately emulate these ideas due to their ignorance of the big picture or the anachronism of these ideas.