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Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

It should be said that John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Patriot Act of their day except far worse, which were used to imprison a majority of the opposition newspaper editors using those acts' definition of sedition. Not who I would quote as a defender of democracy.

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I'd consider the merits of the idea separately from who said it. An idea should be judged by its merits alone.

It should be judged by its merits and looked at askance according to its author, because that often helps you spot sneaky-sneaky demerits being slipped in by the back door.

John Adams’ greatest contribution to the presidency was that after losing the election to Thomas Jefferson in 1800, he stepped down and power changed without bloodshed.

I’m not so sure that will happen should Trump lose this November.

Just wondering-- why would you worry about that? Got anything factual to cite?

He has a fairly long history of ignoring or denying tradition, social norms, presidential norms, factual information and even law. Lots of references to these sort of behaviors throughout his political career, presidency, and business ethics spanning many years.

It doesn't seem too far fetched to extrapolate those behaviors to future events. Obviously, no one can predict the future with certainty of fact, but such an action certainly wouldn't be out of the norm of his past behaviors.

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