Sorry to burst your bubble, but here's one American non-idiot who actively dislikes Lincoln. His "keeping the Union together" was a direct slap in the face to Constitutional law, and thus in many ways to the causes of liberty. I often have a hard time deciding whether I dislike him or FDR more.
Totally agree on Jefferson, on both counts. I wouldn't call him an, -awful- prez, but he definitely didn't stick as strictly to his guns as one would expect of him.
I can understand hate for FDR. FDR... did a lot of good things, and a lot of really bad things. However, I still have a fairly high level of respect for him (except for certain things like what we did to Japanese-Americans, or human experimentation.)
Lincoln... Lincoln's the same way. He was responsible for a lot of evil that -does- tend to get glossed over due to the greater evils the Confederacy commited. However, I still find him to be one of our most interesting presidents, and thus I do love learning more about him and reading about him.
Really, that's the thing about historical leaders. It's not the lawful good leaders we really love.
They aren't interesting, really. That's why we tend to forget about our presidents that weren't part of wars ("Hi, I'm Eisenhower, and I tend to only get remembered as a WW2 general (though less memorable than Patton) or as the cause of the Vietnam War (Debatable), despite the fact I'm responsible for a lot that you people take for granted.")* or weren't part of major scandals (Many of our earlier presidents.)
...Despite that, I'm always open for the less interesting but more efficient leaders being brought in every now and then.
tl;dr: Yeah, there's still differing feelings towards Lincoln (especially in the south, for reasons beyond racism. Not that racism isn't part of it, especially -certain- states), and there's still a lot of splitting on FDR, but even if both aren't -morally- good presidents, both achieved a -lot-, and can at least be seen as efficient presidents (except maybe FDR, depending on your economic beliefs.)
The few morally good presidents we've had are only seen as such because they didn't do much, or they've (or their actions) have been forgotten.
*If you're Iranian, you probably have a really good reason to hate Eisenhower, but even then he's not remembered for that. For some reason "US meddling in the middle east" seems to go only as far back as Reagan to a lot of people, or Carter to the rest.
to him. I agree with The Capo entirely.
