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.
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Meditation, you know, comes by a process imagination. You go through all these processes purification of the elements - making the one melt the other, that into the next higher, that into mind, that into spirit, and then you are spirit.
He even knew the reason why: because enough men had gone off to war saying the time for gardening was when the war was over; whereas there must be men to stay behind and keep gardening alive, or at least the idea of gardening; because once that cord was broken, the earth would grow hard and forget her children. That was why.
People learn to shop for churches; there is no loyalty to the church. They're consumers being attracted to one product or another. I think it's sacrilege, to tell you the truth, it really is.
The world is all alike. Those that seem better than their neighbours are only more artful. They mean the same thing, though they take a different road.
I am alone here in my own mind. There is no map and there is no road. It is one of a kind just as yours is.
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