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Nevertheless local assemblies of citizens constitute the strength of free nations. Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people's reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it. A
Alexis de Tocqueville • Democracy in America, Volume I and II (Optimized for Kindle)
He instructed Majority Leader Robinson to accept whatever changes were necessary. If a senator’s support could be obtained by adding his amendment, he said, add it. The resulting bill, said one Washington observer, “sought to legalize almost anything anybody could think up.”
Jean Edward Smith • FDR




The measure that gave Marshall the authority to circumvent it was concealed as a rider to the Army’s annual appropriation bill.32
Jean Edward Smith • Eisenhower in War and Peace
It may be regarded as a gratuitous public school ever open, in which every juror learns to exercise his rights, enters into daily communication with the most learned and enlightened members of the upper classes, and becomes practically acquainted with the laws of his country, which are brought within the reach of his capacity by the efforts of the
... See moreAlexis de Tocqueville • Democracy in America, Volume I and II (Optimized for Kindle)
Know Your Rights | 100 Mile Border Zone | ACLU
The libertarians were different. They slipped more easily into the American stream. In their insistence on freedom they could claim to be descendants of Locke, Jefferson, and the classical liberal tradition. Some of them interpreted the Constitution as a libertarian document for individual and states rights under a limited federal government, not a
... See moreGeorge Packer • Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
The Apology, as recorded by Plato, his student, is a bracing defense of the individual in search of truth:
A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong. . . . I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I sh
nationalreview.com • A Brief History of Individual Rights | National Review
