Food for Thought on Independence Day

To be filed in the "I couldn't have said it better myself" file...

James Fenimore Cooper, 1838: "Liberty is not a matter of words, but a positive and important condition of society. Its greatest safeguard after placing its foundations in a popular base, is in the checks and balances imposed on the public servants."

Magna Carta: "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."

Alexander Hamilton [quoting Blackstone]: "'To bereave a man of life,' says he, 'or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore A MORE DANGEROUS ENGINE of arbitrary government.'" [Emphasis in original.]

Justice Breyer, concurring with the Supreme Court's June 29, 2006, decision in Hamdan [citations omitted]: "The dissenters say that today's decision would 'sorely hamper the President's ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy.' They suggest that it undermines our Nation's ability to 'preven[t] future attacks' of the grievous sort that we have already suffered. That claim leads me to state briefly what I believe the majority sets forth both explicitly and implicitly at greater length. The Court's conclusion ultimately rests upon a single ground: Congress has not issued the Executive a 'blank check.' Indeed, Congress has denied the President the legislative authority to create military commissions of the kind at issue here. Nothing prevents the President from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary. Where, as here, no emergency prevents consultation with Congress, judicial insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our Nation's ability to deal with danger. To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the Nation's ability to determine--through democratic means--how best to do so."

Bertrand de Jouvenel: "A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."

John Adams: "The most sensible and jealous people are so little attentive to government that there are no instances of resistance until repeated, multiplied oppressions have placed it beyond a doubt that their rulers had formed settled plans to deprive them of their liberties; not to oppress an individual or a few, but to break down the fences of a free constitution, and deprive the people at large of all share in the government, and all the checks by which it is limited."

Samuel Adams: "The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men."

Alexis de Tocqueville: "America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

Thomas Paine: "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

Thomas Jefferson, 1791: "I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."

Henry Steele Commager, 1966: "Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive."

Clint Eastwood, 1997: "Abuse of power isn't limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in our own country if we're not vigilant."

Janet Frame, 1982: " 'For your own good' is a persuasive argument that will eventually make a man agree to his own destruction."

Benjamin Franklin, 1755: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969): "Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have."

D.H. Lawrence, 1915: "Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves."

Thomas Merton, 1968: "May God prevent us from becoming 'right-thinking men' -- that is to say, men who agree perfectly with their own police."

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662): "Justice without force is impotent, force without justice is tyranny. Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just."

Wendell Phillips (1811-1884): "No free people can lose their liberties while they are jealous of liberty. But the liberties of the freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes, worshipping the symbol instead of the principle it represents."

Sen. Alan Simpson, 1982: "There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders."

Dostoevsky: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

And last but not least, Martin Niemoller, 1945:
"First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me."

Happy 4th.