If you select “virtually any date in US history, it would be possible to find the same poisonous ingredients [… that] percolated violently to the surface on January 6th, 2021," writes journalist and historian Nick Bryant in his new book, The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with Itself.
Over two centuries ago, in 1787, Thomas Jefferson, America's third president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Even the most revered of presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, “expanded the powers and prerogatives of the executive branch". Lincoln raised an army (when that should have been the role of Congress) and negated habeus corpus, allowing the government to hold people indefinitely without charge. This in turn “paved the way for the arrest of as many as 15,000 Americans, some of whom were apprehended simply for singing Confederate songs".
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