The ultimate enemy of Democracy is not the drug dealer of the crooked politician or the crazed skinhead. The ultimate enemy is the New King that has become so powerful it can murder its own citizens with impunity.
Interpretation
Democracy faces a greater threat from an oppressive authority than from visible external forces.
In this quote, Gerry Spence highlights that the most significant threat to democracy is not overtly recognizable adversaries like drug dealers or corrupt politicians, but rather a powerful ruling entity that possesses the capability and willingness to impose violence and injustice against its own citizens without fear of consequences. This underlying message urges individuals to be vigilant against the often subtle erosion of democratic principles by those in power.
In practice
This quote can be used in a political speech to emphasize the importance of protecting democratic values.
Today the insatiable quest for profit promotes the new slavery. In bewildering ways, the new is more pernicious than the old, for the New American Slave is told he is free, and he clings to that myth as if his life depended upon it, a suspicion that cannot be totally ignored.
The best antidote for crime is justice. The irony we often fail to appreciate is that the more justice people enjoy, the fewer crimes they commit. Crime is the natural offspring of an unjust society.
When any system has for its goal the advancement of the system over the betterment of its individual members, such a system is embedded in slavery.
The erosion of a nation's concern for life and for individual rights, has always preceded the intrusion of tyranny.
The true test of liberty is the right to test it, the right to question it, the right to speak to my neighbors, to grab them by the shoulders and look into their eyes and ask, “Are we free?” I have thought that if we are free, the answer cannot hurt us. And if we are not free, must we not hear the answer?
The function of the law is not to provide justice or to preserve freedom. The function of the law is to keep those who hold power, in power.
But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Vous comprenez? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.
All my possessions for a moment of time.
I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of Him.
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.
If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity.
You could watch entire villages and see what everyone was doing. I watched NSA tracking people's Internet activities as they typed. I became aware of just how invasive U.S. surveillance capabilities had become. I realized the true breadth of this system. And almost nobody knew it was happening.
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