But the very freedom to choose a candidate or a party in a free election sprang, of course, from the “proposition,” as Abraham Lincoln called it, that “all men are created equal,” that the only rightful government over human beings depends on “the consent of the governed.” The Nazis, on their racial principle, rejected that founding premise and, with it, the regime of free elections. To say that it was legitimate to choose the Nazis in an election was to say that it was legitimate to choose the party that would end free elections.