All politics is a struggle for power; the ultimate kind of power is violence.
C. Wright MillsRead
The framers of our Constitution understood the dangers of unbridled government surveillance. They knew that democracy could flourish only in spaces free from government snooping and interference, and they put restraints on government overreaching in the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. . . . These protections require, at a minimum, a neutral arbiter - a magistrate - standing between the government's endless desire for information and the citizens' desires for privacy.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the need for privacy protections against government surveillance to preserve democracy.
Elizabeth Holtzman's quote highlights the foresight of the framers of the Constitution who recognized that unchecked government surveillance poses a threat to democracy. The essential message is that the right to privacy and the presence of an impartial authority are vital to balancing governmental power and individual freedoms, as outlined in the Fourth Amendment.
In practice
In a speech about government overreach, this quote can be used to stress the importance of civil liberties.
All politics is a struggle for power; the ultimate kind of power is violence.
Engaging Iran won't guarantee improved U.S.-Iranian relations or a more stable Gulf region. But not engaging means more of the same.
My first reaction to Trump being elected was a visceral one. I cried for black people in general but, more particularly, for those of us at the margins who have been struggling and who have never received enough support.
I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.
Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seems to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag.
The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.
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