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.
I am at home everywhere, and nowhere. I am never a stranger and I never quite belong.
And the worst possible thing we could know — worse than knowing of our descent from a mass of microorganisms — is that we are nobodies not somebodies, puppets not people.
Sometimes the Warrior feels as if he were living two lives at once.
The disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailor who got funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world.
Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.
I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain.
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