Political Quotes

“Thank you, I will take a few, and we are very pleased that our colleague from Illinois is here and has been a very significant ally in this. Senator Merkley, one of the reasons I so appreciate your taking this time is that it reminds me a bit of what Jews faced in the 1930s. My family fled the Nazis in the 1930s. Not all of our family got out. My father's great-uncle Max was one of the last gassed in Theresienstadt, and Jewish families saw that a democratically elected government can transform into a murderous regime before the eyes of its citizens very quickly. There isn't any bright line when it happens, no cinematic moment where everything changes--just a moment, as we talked about earlier, in which bureaucrats and lawyers and police begin to follow the bidding of their leader while perverting the rules of their Republic. This was not a singular event. From Europe to Asia to the Americas, democratically elected governments were undermined and replaced by authoritarian regimes--often while retaining the trappings of a democracy. Bureaucrats claimed they were just following rules, soldiers and police--just following orders. Then they just wished us best wishes. Rarely did these leaders start with majority support, but terror, combined with the abuse of the elections process--which we are also very concerned about--allows them to claim power from the ballot box.…”