Ron Paul Talks abt Security (25 QUOTES)

* Real homeland security requires a reexamination of our policies and priorities abroad, and a commitment to the Constitution at home.
* While fear itself is not always the product of irrationality, once experienced it tends to lead away from reason, especially if the experience is extreme in duration or intensity. When people are fearful they tend to be willing to irrationally surrender their rights.
* It is clear, people seek out safety and security when they are in a state of fear, and it is the result of this psychological state that often leads to the surrender of liberty.
* Liberty once again must become more important to us than the desire for security and material comfort.
* Personal safety and economic prosperity can only come as the consequence of liberty.
* Demanding domestic security in times of war invites carelessness in preserving civil liberties and the right of privacy. Frequently the people are only too anxious for their freedoms to be sacrificed on the altar of authoritarianism thought to be necessary to remain safe and secure.
* Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons.”
* Do we really want to live in a world of police checkpoints, surveillance cameras, and metal detectors? Do we really believe government can provide total security? Do we want to involuntarily commit every disaffected, disturbed, or alienated person who fantasizes about violence? Or can we accept that liberty is more important than the illusion of state-provided security?
* America was not founded on a promise of security, it was founded on a promise of personal liberty to pursue happiness.
* Don't we remember that when you sacrifice liberty for security, you lose both?
* Every new security measure represents another failure of the once-courageous American spirit. The more we change our lives, the more we obsess about terrorism, the more the terrorists have won.
* We are not slaves, but many feel they are indentured servants to government. And by and large it has happened with our willing consent. We have knowingly compromised our sacred liberty for temporary promises of security or false prosperity.
* We cannot make ourselves safer simply by creating new departments, spending more taxpayer money on federal police, or sending more troops into yet another foreign land. Real homeland security requires a reexamination of our policies and priorities abroad, and a commitment to the Constitution at home.
* Once people look to government to alleviate their fears and make them safe, expectations exceed reality.
* Until we consider the root causes of terrorism, beyond the jingoistic explanations offered thus far, we will not defeat terrorism and we will not be safer.
* Just as we must not allow terrorists to threaten our lives, we must not allow government to threaten our liberties.
* Everything we have done in response to the 9-11 attacks, from the Patriot Act to the war in Iraq, has reduced freedom in America. Spending more money abroad or restricting liberties at home will do nothing to deter terrorists, yet this is exactly what the 9-11 Commission recommends.
* Rather than asking ourselves what Congress or the president should be doing about terrorism, we ought to ask what government should stop doing.
* More than anything, our federal government should stop deluding us that more government is the answer. We have far more to fear from an unaccountable government at home than from any foreign terrorist.
* It's easy for elected officials in Washington to tell Americans that government will do whatever it takes to defeat terrorism, but it's your freedom and your tax dollars at stake- not theirs.
* We cannot remain free if we allow the endless, undeclared war on terror to serve as an excuse for giving up every last vestige of our privacy.
* Secret trials might be more orderly, that is true, but ask anyone who has suffered under a totalitarian regime whether is it worth sacrificing justice for "efficiency."
* Executive orders authorizing secret trials on American soil, however, send a very different message to America and the world. That is a shame.
* It's easy for elected officials in Washington to tell the American people that the government will do whatever it takes to defeat terrorism. Such assurances inevitably are followed by proposals either to restrict the Constitutional liberties of the American people or spend vast sums from the federal treasury.
* A decent society never accepts or justifies torture. It dehumanizes both torturer and victim, yet seldom produces reliable intelligence.