Contrary to any popular perceptions of Australia’s legal system, a dislike of rights reigns with pious conviction on both sides of the political aisle. Rights are the stuff of nonsense and nuisance, revocable for those deemed undesirable.
Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
― Benjamin Franklin
Can Canada continue to commit what is an enumerated act of genocide by the UNGC [United Nations Genocide Convention] and excuse itself by continuing to say that it is not intending what the Genocide Treaty recognizes as the result of such an act… ?
— Tamara Starblanket1
It’s worse than James Woods suggests.
Each echo chamber is a government. Each government boasts its own citizens. We overlap. We intermesh. We share supermarkets and even living rooms. Yes, some of our loved ones manage to inhabit the town of Stepford, even as they sleep beside us. This is a war of cognition where bodies don’t count.
The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of the people.
— Justice William O. Douglas, The Court Years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas (1980), p. 8.
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
— Thomas Paine, December 1776
If a president was dumb enough to pardon himself that would be such an arrogant statement of power that the House would probably impeach him in a week and the Senate would convict him.
Newt Gingrich, Jun 5, 2018
The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out ‘stop!’ When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.
― Bertolt Brecht, Selected Poems, March 24, 1971
Imagine that a group of bandits entered your house without permission and booted you and your family members out. Afterwards the bandits continue to occupy the house, but they graciously allow you and your family to stay in the cellar. Would you accept such a state of affairs? Would you not want your house back in its entirety? And would you not want the usurpers evicted?
Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility.
