Political Quotes

“Mr. President, whenever government acts, it does so inevitably, unavoidably necessarily at the expense of individual freedom, at the expense of individual liberty and autonomy. This doesn't mean every act by government is bad--quite the contrary. We need government. We need it to protect us from those who would undermine our liberty, those who would interfere with it, those who would harm us personally, whether physically or in some other way. But just as it doesn't mean that every act by government is bad, we should also not be too quick to leap to any conclusion that any and every act of government is good. We have to balance liberty, privacy, autonomy with our corresponding needs for security and physical protection. These things need not be deemed irreconcilable with one another. They can exist in the same universe. In fact, when they are properly balanced, our privacy and our liberty become far from incompatible with our physical security, far from at odds with our need for protection. They can become part of the same whole. In other words, in this respect, our privacy is not at odds with our security. Our privacy is in fact part of our security. To be truly secure means there are limits as to what the government can do to you. It means there are limits as to what information the government can obtain. There are limits as to how the government may go about getting information about you.…”