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I'm reminded of Abraham's Lincoln's quote: Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are cr

I'm reminded of Abraham's Lincoln's quote: Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes" When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy The way it talks about Russia seems anachronistic but I guess our view of the country hasn't really changed much over the last 150 years.

dragonwriter 10y ago
At the time Lincoln was writing, Russia was an absolute monarchy politically and largely feudal economically when the West (even those countries that were formally monarchies) had substantial penetration of both democratic institutions and capitalist economics (to the point that detailed criticism of capitalism and proposals for post-capitalist economic systems were around; this letter, after all, was written several years after the Communist Manifesto.) So, yeah, it's not surprising that Russia would be chosen as an example of a backward and anti-liberty regime even then.