Jeannette Rankin Quotes
Establish democracy ... based on human rights as superior to property rights.
First woman elected to Congress
Jeannette Rankin, 1880-1973, U. S. Congresswoman (Republican, MT), Quoted in Josephson, Jeannette Rankin: First Lady in Congress, 1974
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
His way was to have a strong dictator, providing few human rights guarantees, and very limited civil liberties. With that to extol the virtues of those democratic elements, and state that this is the goal that his dictatorship was working towards. He believed that the poor education, the dominance of a single religion that is itself non democratic, a powerful military that was not under the control of civilian government, and the tribal nature of his society made it impossible to have a current full democracy. The government that replaced him was better but far from a full democracy. Only time and trial will determine whether or not he was right.
He was condemning a practice whereby some nations would have freedoms guaranteed by their constitutions or laws, but the totalitarian government would “suspend” the constitutional guarantees in times of “national emergencies.” Yew was in opposition at the time he made this famous statement. 30 years later when he was the Prime Minister, he had a different view. See {585201}.
This statement summarized what had been a basic principle of American Law as derived from English law. See {587704}.
See {587703} for a similar statement by a Supreme Court Justice.
Karol Jozef Wojtyla
Jeannette Pickering Rankin was an American politician and women's rights advocate, and the first woman to hold federal office in the United States. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican from Montana in 1916, and again in 1940.
