My primary interest in this is to determine where Wheeler got off ordering arms to be surrendered, and what would have happened had a gun owner told him to go pound sand. [More]It looks like habeas corpus may not have been the only thing Mr. Lincoln sanctioned suspending...
The phrase "The Constitution is not a suicide pact", or the concept behind it, have been used so many times by so many politicians that their origins are rather obscure.
ReplyDeleteRemember this:
"Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other" -- John Adams
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102
In other words, our leaders give the Constitution lip service. The only thing that holds them in check is the American people. They will do anything that the American people let them get away with.