Earlier today we picked up a hugely popular comment at the New York Times from “Tom in Chicago.” Scholar David Bromwich pointed out an echo.
Tom in Chicago, on the U.S. and Israel (2011):
It is our unqualified support of them that has garnered nothing but justifiable
hatred and disgust from a very large chunk of the world’s population. It
exposes our double-standards toward freedom and justice and makes hypocrites of us all.
Lincoln in Peoria, on slavery (1854):
I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in
the world–enables the enemies of free institutions, to taunt us as
hypocrites– causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty.
