The more vehemently a president equates democracy with freedom

The more vehemently a president equates democracy with freedom, the greater the danger he likely poses

to Americans’ rights. President Abraham Lincoln was by far the most avid champion of democracy among

nineteenth century presidents—and the president with the greatest visible contempt for the

Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Lincoln swayed people to view national unity as the ultimate test

of the essence of freedom or self-rule. That Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, jailed 20,000 people

without charges, forcibly shut down hundreds of newspapers that criticized him, and sent in federal

troops to shut down state legislatures was irrelevant because he proclaimed “that this nation shall

have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not

perish from the earth.”

***

Lysander Spooner, a Massachusetts abolitionist, ridiculed President Lincoln’s claim that the Civil

UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots was fought to preserve a “government by consent.” Spooner observed, “The

only idea . . . ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this—that it is one to which

everybody must consent, or be shot.”

Over at Foreign Relations, William Hauser and Jerome Slater have a new idea on how to win the war on

terror.