You have said that many times (sometimes actually getting the quote correct) and I have always agreed with you: no it is not.
But there are LOTS of ways for a nation to 'commit suicide', LOTS of ways for an Empire to decline and fall, lots of ways for Authoritarians to amass more and more power until ordinary freedom is dead.
And, our founders, and some of the great minds that followed them, saw it clearly.
"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad...." --- James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --- Benjamin Franklin
"Timid men... prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous seas of liberty." --- Thomas Jefferson
"When the people fear the government, you have TYRANNY, when the government fears the people, you have FREEDOM" --- Thomas Jefferson
"Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction." --- Ronald Reagan
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts." --- Edmund Burke
"The greatest threats to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." --- Justice Brandeis
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