Reply #10: I understand your point, but you're still failing to take into account

[DivinBreuvage]

the situation he was dealing with. The hard fact of human affairs is that sometimes extraordinary situations do require extraordinary measures, and that at such times a rigid insistence on "business as usual" is not only a less effective way to handle the crisis but can in fact be downright counterproductive and harmful, like a member of a fundamentalist cult refusing to allow medical treatment to a child dying of a treatable disease. You have only to look at the activities of men such as Governor Joseph Brown of Georgia to see how the extreme adherence to theoretical principles palpably undermined the Confederate war effort. The ivory-tower belief that a cherished theoretical principle can and must be applicable under all times and conditions in the real world, is a pernicious fantasy.

Having granted these points, the danger of course is always that men will demand extraordinary measures when none are called for, or that their implementation of those measures will be harsher or more pervasive than it needs to be. This can certainly be said of the men behind the Patriot Act and especially Patriot Act II, but I don't think it can be said of Lincoln in the situation he was forced to deal with. That is why the degree and extent to which he enforced these measures really does matter, and why the fact that he only did it in limited circumstances is more important than you seem to think it is.