“To that point, ironically, the American president who could’ve actually been likened to Hitler (before Hitler) in some of his methods was …wait for it …Abraham Lincoln.”
Yep, but I’m never popular around here when I point out that Abe took the first really big steps towards shirking the constraints of the Constitution, steps which have never been, and probably never could be reversed.
-—and then there was Teddy Roosevelt—and not long after that, his cousin-—
Eh, suit yourself. He’s not exactly everyone’s cup of tea.
Personally, though, I’d say the first really big steps towards shirking the constraints of the Constitution were taken MUCH earlier, earlier than even Andrew Jackson’s explicit ignoring of the Supreme Court when doing the Trail of Tears, in fact. I’m referring to Thomas Jefferson. You can read up about it here: http://distributistreview.com/review-liberty-the-god-that-failed-part-i/
Specifically:
“Meet Thomas Jefferson
“One of the more interesting elements of this book is the level to which Ferrara deconstructs Jefferson from primary sources. Far from the libertarian “limited government” hero, in his second term Jefferson is a big government ogre. Ferrara provides countless examples of Jefferson’s overreach which, in contrast, makes the caricature of King George look positively saintly:
“1. His call for the shooting of Tory counter-revolutionaries who should have been treated as prisoners of war, pursuant to a bill of attainder he himself drafted and pushed through the Virginia legislature.
“2. Jefferson’s support for the early Jacobin massacres as expressed in the “Adam and Eve” letter.
“3. His lifelong ownership of slaves, some of whom he had flogged for attempting to escape, and his continued slave trading while President.
“4. Endorsement of state law prosecutions for “seditious libel” against the President and Congress.
“5. His approval of an expedient and quite illegal “amendment” of the Constitution by the Republican-controlled House to expand the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in order to facilitate the impeachment of his Federalist opponent, Judge Pickering, for drunkenness.
“6. Jefferson’s declaration that “where the laws become inadequate even to their own preservation… the universal resource is a dictator, or martial law.”
“7. His embargo of American shipping, including the federal seizure of ships and cargoes, without due process.
“8. His instigation of “treason” trials and his demand for the death penalty for American citizens who had merely attempted to recover their own property from federal agents.(Christopher A. Ferra, Liberty, the God That Failed (Angelico Press, 2012), 237-239.)
“In popular culture, Jefferson is presented to us as the quintessential Founding Father whose model we ought to follow. He has become the archetype of “liberty”. Yet when Jefferson came to power, he brought into being the truth of the words uttered by David Starkey in his monumental documentary on the English Monarchy, “What is a president, but a king?” Jefferson’s power was greater than that of medieval kings, unchecked by tradition, custom or the Church, and Jefferson far from following any concept of limited government ruled like a tyrant. Likewise Robespierre, whose terror Jefferson approved of in the “Adam and Eve” letters, committed greater crimes and exhibited a vastly greater tyranny than even the lies about Louis XVI!”