A quotation from Teddy Roosevelt
We hold that our loyalty is due solely to the American Republic, and to all our public servants exactly in proportion as they efficiently and faithfully serve the Republic. Our opponents, in flat contradiction of Lincoln’s position, hold that our loyalty is due to the President, not the country; to one man, the servant of the people, instead of to the people themselves. In practice they adopt the fetishism of all believers in absolutism; for every man who parrots the cry of “stand by the President,” without adding the proviso “so far as he serves the Republic” takes an attitude as essentially unmanly as that of any Stuart Royalist who championed the doctrine that the King could do no wrong. No self-respecting and intelligent freeman can take such an attitude.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Essay (1918-05), “Lincoln and Free Speech,” Metropolitan Magazine, Vol. 47, No. 6
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