Thoughts
From Jacob G. Hornberger
The president now wields the power to assassinate Americans and to arrest Americans, incarcerate them, and torture them, all without any judicial accountability, due process of law, and trial by jury. Those are powers that traditionally are wielded by totalitarian regimes. Yet, the president of the United States is democratically elected.
A free society necessarily depends on the limitation of power of whoever happens to hold public office. That was what the United States Constitution was all about - to limit the power of those holding federal office.
2017-04-25 at 13:04:11
From Norm Stamper, former Seattle police chief
"Policing is broken... It has evolved as a paramilitary, bureaucratic, organizational arrangement that distances police officers from the communities they have been sworn to protect and serve. When we have shooting after shooting after shooting that most people would define as at least questionable, it is time to look, not just at a few bad apples, but at the barrel. And I am convinced that it is the barrel that is rotted."
2017-04-25 at 13:02:05
More From John W. Whitehead
Stop being so obedient. Stop being so compliant and herdlike. Stop kowtowing to anyone and everyone in uniform. Stop perpetuating the false notion that those who work for the government-the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the police-are in any way superior to the rest of the citizenry. Stop playing politics with your principles. Stop making excuses for the governments growing list of human rights abuses and crimes. Stop turning a blind eye to the governments corruption and wrongdoing and theft and murder. Stop tolerating ineptitude and incompetence by government workers. Stop allowing the government to treat you like a second-class citizen. Stop censoring what you say and do for fear that you might be labeled an extremist or worse, unpatriotic. Stop sitting silently on the sidelines while the police state kills, plunders and maims your fellow citizens. Stop being a slave.
2017-04-23 at 21:16:48
More From Cousin Lucky
Unfortunately, when we leave our homes there is no way to tell what misfortune may cross our paths; if we go looking for trouble it may find us unprepared for the outcome!!
2017-04-23 at 19:13:25
From Glenn Greenwald
Oppression is designed to compel obedience and submission to authority. Those who voluntarily put themselves in that state - by believing that their institutions of authority are just and good and should be followed rather than subverted - render oppression redundant, unnecessary. Of course people who think and behave this way encounter no oppression. That is their reward for good, submissive behavior. They are left alone by institutions of power because they comport with the desired behavior of complacency and obedience without further compulsion. But the fact that good, obedient citizens do not themselves perceive oppression does not mean that oppression does not exist.
2017-04-21 at 13:59:02
From Howard Zinn
Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience.. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That is our problem.. people are obedient, all these herdlike people.
2017-04-21 at 13:56:23
From Frederic Bastiat
Self-interest is that indomitable individualistic force within us that urges us on to progress and discovery, but at the same time disposes us to monopolize our discoveries. Competition is that no less indomitable humanitarian force that wrests progress, as fast as it is made, from the hands of the individual and places it at the disposal of all mankind.
2017-04-21 at 13:54:25
From Joe Weisberg
"I think the Russian villain has endured in part because Americans are able to use Russian enemy stereotypes without fearing that they are treading into racist territory. Somehow, it is just free of those symbols and those associations, whereas most of the others, in what is now our fairly broad collection of people that we sometimes consider enemies, most of them are connected on some level with racist stereotypes or fears of racist stereotypes, and Russians just do not have that association. It is almost like open season on Russians."
2017-04-20 at 16:41:44
From Dwight Eisenhower
Any person who does not clearly understand that national security and national solvency are mutually dependent, and that permanent maintenance of a crushing weight of military power would eventually create dictatorship, should not be entrusted with any kind of responsibility in our country.
2017-04-20 at 16:40:46
From Paul Craig Roberts
For my generation, life in America today is barbaric.
2017-04-17 at 19:54:16
From Radley Balko
"We have reached the point where state actors can penetrate rectums and vaginas, where judges can order forced catheterizations, and where police and medical personnel can perform scans, enemas and colonoscopies without the suspects consent. And these procedures are not to nab kingpins or cartels, but people who at worst are hiding an amount of drugs that can fit into a body cavity. In most of these cases, they were suspected only of possession or ingestion. Many of them were innocent... But these tactics are not about getting drugs off the street... These tactics are instead about degrading and humiliating a class of people that politicians and law enforcement have deemed the enemy."
2017-04-17 at 19:31:19
From James Madison
"Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people."
2017-04-17 at 15:28:21
From Plato
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that people may require a leader.
2017-04-17 at 15:27:08
From Shaun King
President Trump has been in office for just three months. He has 45 months to go in his first term. He is simply being himself - and that is the problem. The man is not going to shapeshift into something he is not. His ignorance and ego could get us all killed.
2017-04-15 at 03:55:49
From F. A..Harper
When thievery is resorted to for the means with which to do good, compassion is killed. Those who would do good with the loot then lose their capacity for self-reliance, the same as a thiefs self-reliance atrophies rapidly when he subsists on food that is stolen. And those who are repeatedly robbed of their property simultaneously lose their capacity for compassion.
2017-04-14 at 12:56:47