"We warned you..."
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."- James Madison
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Ben Franklin
"[W]hen we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.... [However, now] there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing
projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more
things like that to try to make people safer in their communities.""
- President Bill Clinton, 3-22-94, MTV's "Enough is Enough"
"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
--Thomas Paine,
Common Sense |
