George F. Kennan Quotes
A foreign policy aimed at the achievement of total security is the one thing I can think of that is entirely capable of bringing this country to a point where it will have no security at all. And a ruthless, reckless insistence on attempting to stamp out everything that could conceivably constitute a reflection of improper foreign influence in our national life, regardless of the actual damage it is doing to the cost of eliminating it, in terms of other American values, is the one thing I can think of that should reduce us all to a point where the very independence we are seeking to defend would be meaningless, for we would be doing things to ourselves as vicious and tyrannical as any that might be brought to us from outside.
George F. Kennan, 1904-2005, Historian & U.S. Ambassador to Russia and Yugoslavia, Radcliffe College Commencement Address, June 16, 1954
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is likely the source of the paraphrased “quote” attributed to Lincoln: America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. See related quote.
Earlier in the Arab-Israeli conflict United Nations troops were stationed at the borders to prevent either side from attacking the other. The Arabs mounted a major attack and the United Nations troops ran and did not fight. Ever since then, Israel policy was never to depend on any other than Israel to defend the country and the people.
The legislation to which he was referring was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which had recently been enacted. This quotation illustrates how deep virulent racism was then embedded in American society—especially the South.
This was his political speech about the importance of the state militia. However, in the War of 1812 in September the British attacked and burned the town of Portland which the militia feebly tried to defend. See his private view then: {613332}.
This quotation is typical of many constitutions in the sense that one part of the Constitution guarantees political freedom for all citizens and another part then makes so many exceptions that there are no guaranteed rights other than those the government wishes to give at any point of time. In this particular Constitution Article 10 does both, one right after the other. So Clause 1 gives the rights and Clause 2 explains how they can be taken away. For example, in 2008 university students were not allowed to join political parties.
In the aftermath of 9-11, there was a call for giving the law enforcement agencies more authority and the Patriot Act was passed in haste and fear. Some law enforcement personnel then went about picking up Arab Americans and in many cases holding them incommunicado without any charges. No terrorists were discovered by this process and yet good American citizens were abused, traumatized and insulted. In our zeal to protect American freedom, we actually began to resemble some of the capricious and abusive practices of our undemocratic enemies. There were other abuses allowed under the Patriot Act, but at the time of this writing the extent had not yet been revealed, but the refusal of the authorities to make public the national security benefits suggests that there was not much national security benefit and much abuse.
George Frost Kennan was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histories of the relations between the USSR and the United States. He was also one of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men".
