#bertie

Freedom is poetry, taking liberties with words, breaking the rules of normal speech, violating common sense. Freedom is violence. ↗

— Norman O. Brown

#common #common sense #freedom #liberties #normal

The state does not oppose the freedom of people to express their particular cultural attachments, but nor does it nurture such expression—rather [...] it responds with 'benign neglect' [....] The members of ethnic and national groups are protected against discrimination and prejudice, and they are free to maintain whatever part of their ethnic heritage or identity they wish, consistent with the rights of others. But their efforts are purely private, and it is not the place of public agencies to attach legal identities or disabilities to cultural membership or ethnic identity. This separation of state and ethnicity precludes any legal or governmental recognition of ethnic groups, or any use of ethnic criteria in the distribution of rights, resources, and duties. ↗

— Will Kymlicka

#discrimination #ethnicity #individuals #liberalism #liberties

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#activism #agitation #dissent #human-rights #liberties

Our constitutional liberties shall not be sacrificed in our search for greater security, for that is what our enemies and all enemies of freedom and democracy hope to achieve. ↗

— Tammy Baldwin

#constitutional #democracy #freedom #greater #hope

In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties. ↗

— Henri Frederic Amiel

#first of all #freedom #health #liberties

Let me be clear: There is no stronger advocate for civil liberties in the Senate than myself. ↗

— Saxby Chambliss

#civil #civil liberties #clear #liberties #me

Liberal Democrats in government will not follow the last Labour government by sounding the retreat on the protection of civil liberties in the United Kingdom. It continues to be essential that our civil liberties are safeguarded, and that the state is not given the powers to snoop on its citizens at will. ↗

— Nick Clegg

#civil #civil liberties #continues #democrats #essential

Government is, by its very nature, a destroyer of liberties; the Obama administration, specifically, is promising to interfere with the economy and the health care system so profoundly that Washington will soon have us all in chains. ↗

— Thomas Frank

#care #chains #destroyer #economy #government

The Roman Catholics must know as well as we do that "Popery" when encouraged by government has always been dangerous to the liberties of the people. ↗

— Lord George Gordon

#been #catholics #dangerous #encouraged #government

I have very real concerns about the civil liberties implications of ultimately requiring every resident to submit themselves for compulsory fingerprinting or some other biometric test. ↗

— Patricia Hewitt

#civil #civil liberties #compulsory #concerns #every