Lincoln isn't simply condemning hypocrisy—he's making a harder argument about moral consistency. He suggests that the act of denying freedom to others corrupts something essential in the denier, making them *unworthy* of liberty rather than merely inconsistent. It's a claim about how tyranny damages the tyrant's own soul, not just the oppressed. When we see someone fighting fiercely for their own rights while dismissing others'—say, a worker demanding fair wages who refuses to acknowledge his employees' grievances—we're watching exactly this degradation at work.