The prospect of a government that treats all its citizens as criminal suspects is more terrifying than any terrorist. And even more frightening is a citizenry that can accept the surrender of its freedoms as the price of "freedom".
Interpretation
This quote warns against a government that infringes on personal freedoms under the guise of security.
Joseph Sobran highlights the danger of a government that perceives all citizens as potential criminals, suggesting that this mindset creates a more profound threat to liberty than any external terrorism. He argues that society's willingness to trade its freedoms for a false sense of security is a terrifying acceptance of tyranny.
In practice
During a debate on privacy laws, this quote could emphasize the importance of protecting personal freedoms.
There has never been a humane communist regime. Marxism is inherently totalitarian. It recognizes no moral limits on the state. It’s the most convenient ideology for aspiring tyrants; it also retains its appeal for intellectuals, who have proved equally skillful at rationalizing abuses of power and at exculpating themselves.
Man is the only creature disposed to kill huge numbers of members of his own species, and his instrument is usually the state.
One man's remorse is another man's reminiscence.
We ask only that the law shall work alike on all men.
Thought is more than a right - it is the very breath of man. Whoever fetters thought attacks man himself. To speak, to write, to publish, are things, so far as the right is concerned, absolutely identical. They are the ever-enlarging circles of intelligence in action; they are the sonorous waves of thought.
He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.
The Bible is the Word of God in such a way that when the Bible speaks, God speaks.
Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.
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