Anthony, I was struck by how D’Souza dismisses Lincoln’s violation of civil liberties by saying that the nation “was at war for its very survival.” This is the same justification the neocons use for the PATRIOT Act, perhaps the real reason the neocons are such passionate defenders of Lincoln is because they see the parallels between Lincoln’s crushing of civil liberties in the name of the Declaration of Independence and the modern assault on liberty in the name of preserving “our way of life.”

D’Souza also fails to address Lincoln’s use of that particularly abhorrent form of slavery known as the draft.