Stalin never denied anyone's humanity. The communists merely thought that what they wanted to accomplish was a greater good, and therefore, if they had to kill millions, it was worth it. In that respect, they were exactly like Abraham Lincoln. He broke the law, abrogated the law, was a tyrant and despot simply because he thought his end was worth it. He was the forerunner of and the archetype for the 20th century despot.
Stalin absolutely denied the humanity of anyone who was counter-revolutionary as shown by his slaughtering them as if they were hogs and cattle. Hitler and Nazism were very clear that anything "dysgenic" could be exterminated with no more thought than if they were plague-bearing bacilli.
The Founders intended the Union to be perpetual. Lincoln saved the Union and the Constitution because he saved them from a rebellion which sought to re-cast the Founding from one grounded in liberty to one grounded in slavery and to re-cast the Constitution as an enactment of positive law justifying enslavement, while proclaiming "liberty". In vindicating the principle of self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, in re-grounding government in the equal right of every man to place into his own mouth the fruit of his own labor, in refuting the Southern argument that there was no difference between men and hogs and hence in refuting the justification of the South for treating other men as if they were hogs (and horses and oxen) Lincoln vindicated the the laws of nature and of nature's God upon which this nation was founded free and independent.
Communists: I still hate them even after they changed their name to "liberals". ____________________
My boss asked why I wasn't working. I told him I was being a democrat for Halloween.
