OK, you got me, so I'm guilty of that political trick of ignoring the broader picture and using only partial facts in support of my own narrow point of view. sosumi ;) The words, taken on their own, are fine words and I stick by the bit about a government's willingness to persecute dissidents being a sign of its inherent weakness and lack of fitness to serve. Mike "Trei, Peter" wrote:

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From: mmotyka@lsil.com[SMTP:mmotyka@lsil.com] What a guy! Abraham Lincoln :

"Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."

President Abraham Lincoln, "First Inaugural Address" (available at http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html)

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,---a most sacred right---a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it."

(Speech in the United States House of Representatives, Jan. 12, 1848)

As far as I am concerned, to the extent that a government restricts speech against it, it betrays its weakness and strengthens the oppostion. When was the last time we heard one of our current crop of political weenies speak so clearly or with such faith in the governed? Not in my lifetime. Mike

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As I said in an earlier post, there is usually a gulf - a huge one, between what institutions say and what they do

Consider these actions of Lincoln in the light the above quotes:

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From 'Getting Lincoln Right': http://www.lewrockwell.com/dieteman/dieteman50.html

[...] Also, should those who debate the greatness of Lincoln ignore the fact that he arrested and exiled a US Congressman from Ohio - Clement Valladingham - who was also running for governor of Ohio at the time, over anti-war remarks made during a campaign speech? Valladingham was arrested in his bedroom in the middle of the night.

Should one also overlook Lincoln's destruction of the rule of law in "loyal" Maryland? When Maryland voiced its support for the CSA and appeared itself ready to secede, Lincoln arrested 31 Maryland legislators, the mayor of Baltimore (the nation's 3rd largest city at the time), and a US Congressman from Maryland, as well as numerous editors and publishers.

Not only did Lincoln imprison two US Congressmen, he also wrote out an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Roger Taney, after Taney wrote the opinion in Ex Parte Merryman (1861) rebuking Lincoln's illegitimate suspension of habeas corpus (see Charles Adams, p 46-53). John Marshall, whose opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803) famously declared that "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is," also wrote the opinion in Ex Parte Bollman and Swartwout (1807) declaring that suspension of habeas corpus was a power vested only in the Congress. Lincoln simply ignored the law. Additionally, US Army troops refused to release Merryman into the custody of a federal marshal sent by Taney pursuant to the court order that Merryman be freed.

Lincoln, then, imprisoned members of the federal legislative branch, and also sought to imprison the chief member of the federal judiciary. What happened to checks and balances? Lincoln, with the backing of the army, simply exercised whatever powers he desired. As noted Lincoln scholar Mark Neely writes in The Last Best Hope of Earth, Lincoln arrested the Marylanders "without much agonizing over their constitutionality" (p 133). [...]