Dissident Veteran For Peace: Quotable: Dahl on the Supreme Court

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Quotable: Dahl on the Supreme Court

Americans are inclined to believe that the Supreme Court is the deus ex machina that regularly saves American democracy from itself. This view is difficult to support by the actual decisions of the Court. ... there is not a single case in the history of this nation where the Supreme Court has struck down national legislation designed to curtail, rather than to expand, the key prerequisites to popular equality and popular sovereignty.

Source: A Preface to Democratic Theory by Robert A. Dahl (Chicago & London: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1956) pp. 58-59.

Elsewhere on page 59, Dahl lists the "key prerequisites to popular equality and popular sovereignty" as "the right to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press."

Labels: civil liberties, critical thinking, law, politics, quotations, Supreme Court, United States