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Constitutional Rights Quotes

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Constitutional Rights Quotes

“Isn't political freedom an American right? That is what always horrifies me about these righteous purges; the implicit denial of our constitutional rights. We forget sometimes that the essence of democracy is to question. In those days, people thought- some still do- that liberal meant Communist. To me a liberal is one who moves slightly left when the Fascists get too strong and slightly right when the Communists get too pushy. A real liberal has to be flexible that way.”

PoliticsFreedomDemocracyLiberalismConstitutional RightsFlexibility Of Mind
Book:Myrna Loy: being and becoming
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“The constitutional right of today may be a violation of human rights tomorrow, hence, no constitution, and in fact, no text is to be taken as gospel… they must be scrutinized by each new generation and if found incompatible with the new society, must be either amended or discarded altogether.”

PoliticsConstitutionSocial JusticeHuman RightsSocial ReformHuman Rights ViolationConstitutional RightsConstitutional Government2nd Amendment
Book:Solo Standing on Guard: Life Before Law
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“Few men or women in our lifetimes have been so unjustly vilified in the popular media as the late Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court. If you are not a lawyer who read his opinions, if you know nothing about Justice Scalia other than what you have read in the popular press, you have surely been deceived into believing that this man was some sort of archconservative who could regularly be counted upon to side with the government and trample the constitutional liberties of the poor and the powerless. The truth is much more complicated than that. While Justice Scalia was, by his own admission, exceptionally stingy in refusing to accept arguments about constitutional rights that involved some aspect of general "liberty" that are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution—rights like abortion, or same-sex marriage—when it came to the defense of constitutional liberties that are explicitly described in the Constitution, no other recent member of the Supreme Court was so uncompromisingly passionate and liberal in refusing to water down those protections.”

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Book:You Have the Right to Remain Innocent
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“Any every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves peaceably, and as good subjects of the commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law: and no subordination of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law. Massachusetts Constitution.”

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Book:Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
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“The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, intact for over 200 years, guaranteed that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath of affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. After September 11th, 2001, those were just words on an old piece of paper, no longer a restriction of the Government’s overreaching power to shake down its subjects.”

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Book:A Patriot's Act
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“VIRGINIA 1/20/2020: The right to self defense is inalienable from the right to life. Weaken one and the other is devalued. Surrender your arms today and forfeit your life tomorrow. It is by no coincidence that a morally bankrupt man is behind the violation of the 2nd Amendment in the State of Virginia: Governor Northam, a man otherwise known for his support for after birth abortion and the wearing of "black face." someone with a defective moral compass, who does not know the sanctity of life, can't very well be expected to know the value of defending it.”

Second AmendmentGun RightsRight To LifeConstitutional RightsInalienable Rights2nd AmendmentRight To Self Defense
Author:A.E. Samaan
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“[T]here is both an intrinsic and instrumental value to privacy. Intrinsically, privacy is precious to the extent that it is a component of a liberty. Part of citizenship in a free society is the expectation that one's personal affairs and physical person are inviolable so long as one remains within the law. A robust concept of freedom includes the freedom from constant and intrusive government surveillance of one's life. From this perspective, Fourth Amendment violations are objectionable for the simple fact that the government is doing something it has no licence to do–that is, invading the privacy of a law-abiding citizen by monitoring her daily activities and laying hands on her person without any evidence of wrongdoing. Privacy is also instrumental in nature. This aspect of the right highlights the pernicious effects, rather than the inherent illegitimacy, of intrusive, suspicionless surveillance. For example, encroachments on individual privacy undermine democratic institutions by chilling free speech. When citizens–especially those espousing unpopular viewpoints–are aware that the intimate details of their personal lives are pervasively monitored by government, or even that they could be singled out for discriminatory treatment by government officials as a result of their First Amendment expressive activities, they are less likely to freely express their dissident views.”

FreedomLibertyConstitutionPrivacyFree SpeechFirst AmendmentSurveillanceAmerican SocietyConstitutional RightsFourth AmendmentSurveillance Society
Book:A Government Of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State
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“The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.”

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Author:Albert Gallatin
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“We are so considerate of the minute constitutional rights and even of the political feelings and influence of people whom we have every reason to anticipate with preventive action!... The Japanese in California should be under armed guard to the last man and woman and to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over.”

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Author:Westbrook Pegler
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“I still want my right to defend myself. A railroad operation, and you know it, from Nixon on down. they got you running around violating my constitutional rights.”

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Book:United States of America, plaintiff-appellee, v. Bobby G. Seale, defendant-appellant: appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division ...
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“When we use the term pig, for example, we are referring to the people who systematically violate the peoples' constitutional rights - whether they be monopoly capitalists or police. The term is now being adopted by radicals, hippies, and minority peoples. Even the workers, when the pigs supported strike-breakers like they did as Union Oil where 100 local police came in a cracked strikers' heads, began to call them by their true name.”

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Author:Bobby Seale
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“Clearly we must do everything we can to protect our country from the serious potential of another terrorist attack, but we can and must do so in a way that also protects the constitutional rights of the American people and maintains our free society. We can do that without living in an Orwellian world where the government and private corporations know every telephone call that we make, every website we visit, everyplace we go.”

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Author:Bernie Sanders
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“I believe strongly that we can protect our people without undermining our constitutional rights and I worry very, very much about the huge attacks on privacy that we have seen in recent years - both from the government and the private sector. I worry that we are moving toward an Orwellian society, and this is something I will oppose as vigorously as I can.”

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Author:Bernie Sanders
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“[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.... Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

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Author:Antonin Scalia
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“The greater the importance to safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion.”

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Author:Charles Evans Hughes
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“A rioter with a Molotov cocktail in his hands is not fighting for civil rights any more than a Klansman with a sheet on his back and mask on his face. They are both more or less what the law declares them: lawbreakers, destroyers of constitutional rights and liberties and ultimately destroyers of a free America.”

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Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966
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“I think what Republicans want is someone who will stand up and lead, who will take on the great challenges of the day, who will make the case that the path we're on isn't working; that the Obama-economy is a disaster, that Obamacare is a trainwreck, that our constitutional rights are under assault and that we need to restore America's leadership in the world.”

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Author:Ted Cruz
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“To take a single step beyond the boundaries specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to definition.”

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Book:The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont
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“[You have Rights] antecedent to all earthly governments: Rights, that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; Rights, derived from the Great Legislator of the universe.”

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Book:The Works of John Adams Vol. 3: Autobiography, Diary, Notes of a Debate in the Senate, Essays
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“No system of criminal justice can, or should, survive if it comes to depend for its continued effectiveness on the citizens' abdication through unawareness of their constitutional rights. No system worth preserving should have to fear that if an accused is permitted to consult with a lawyer, he will become aware of, and exercise, these rights.”

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Author:Arthur Goldberg
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“If Americans loved judicial activism, liberals wouldn't be lying about what it is. Judicial activism means making up constitutional rights in order to strike down laws the justices don't like based on their personal preferences. It's not judicial activism to strike down laws because they violate the Constitution.”

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Author:Ann Coulter
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