[Odile]

John Adams was RIGHT when he pushed the Alienation and Seditions Act. Abraham Lincoln was RIGHT when he suspended Habeas Corpus, thus defying a direct order from Chief Justice Roger Taney of the Supreme Court. Woodrow Wilson was RIGHT when he banned the publication of views opposing his World War I policies.


You said I was wrong on all these counts regarding the Draconian powers that certain presidents used extra-legally in times past.

Don't you realize that we wouldn't be here today -- in all probability we wouldn't even HAVE a United States of America today -- if it hadn't been for the courageous, decisive, sometimes extra-legal acts of our greatest leaders.

The democratic process works well enough in times of peace, but in times of crisis the capacity to act QUICKLY and DECISIVELY is of paramount importance.

Remember this: No armed service has ever operated as DEMOCRACY.

My point in bringing all that up was that in each of those cases THE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC SURVIVED.

The prissy schoolgirlish notion that our leaders must maintain a slavish obedience to the letter of the Law at all times is far more a creature of the LEFT than of the RIGHT.

Would you have had Ronald Reagan deposed for his role in Iran Contra? Do you REALLY believe that Nixon suffered a JUST fate in the Watergate matter?

Bill Clinton's skirting of the law was entirely VENAL -- vain and selfish -- self-serving, self-promoting, self-saving. To compare Bill Clinton, as someone else did below, to the great men I have listed above -- or even to FDR, whose achievements in my opinion have always been vastly overrated -- is a slap in the face of many of the greatest figures in American History.

[DAnconia55]

Don't you realize that we wouldn't be here today -- in all probability we wouldn't even HAVE a United States of America today -- if it hadn't been for the courageous, decisive, sometimes extra-legal acts of our greatest leaders.

Yes, I do. And that's the problem. We shouldn't be in our current Anti-Constitutional form.
Lincoln was treasonous.

capacity to act QUICKLY and DECISIVELY is of paramount importance.
And outside of the Constitution and moral law.

My point in bringing all that up was that in each of those cases THE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC SURVIVED.

The Republic died in the Civil War. China and Russia called themselves Republics also.