The salutary rule of private life that one should not speak poorly of the recently departed does not properly apply to public persons who we know only through their public deeds. When they choose to lead a political life, which is the only capacity in which we have occasion to know them, and they have had an overwhelmingly perverse influence on the course of public affairs, a different rule must apply. If decorum counsels that we do not exactly on their graves, at least honest historical judgment should not be suspended or falsified for inappropriate application of rules that properly pertain to private life. Mixing of the private with the exclusively public is a common propaganda tactic....
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