Barack Obama Quotes
My Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation.
Obama, Barack. "Statement on Signing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012." Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Barack Obama, 2011, Book 2, National Archives and Records Administration, 2014, p. 1656.
Mosley had been incarcerated without charges or trial under the “national emergency” of the Second World War. This prevented him from organizing his “Blackshirts.” When it was clear that Germany would lose the war, Oswald was released, but without the prospect of Fascism dominating continental Europe, there was little interest in Fascist movements in England.
Note the use of the phrase “against the government.” One of the unique aspects of the American Constitution and The Bill of Rights is that the government is considered a potential and even probable infringer on the liberties of the people. It is almost as though the government was the potential enemy. Modern libertarians state this very explicitly and it is ever present in the views of both the right and left wings of American politics. Most centrists recoil at the thought that some citizens see the government as the enemy, but even in America there have been times where the government has infringed on the rights of citizens only to have the courts or future administrations and Congresses correct the error.
Contrast this quotation with {585205} and {585206}. When younger, he was an ardent democrat and human rights advocate. Once in power however, he advocated and did all the totalitarian things that he used to rail about.
Even in the United States, there have been occasions where this has happened such as the Japanese American internment in WWII, and the George W. Bush Administrations actions in fighting the War on Terror. 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}.
See Luis Kutner, the originator of the concept.
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
