David K. Shipler Quotes

The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.

If we give up all our privacy rights, have we become any safer?

Americans need to understand the significance of having their civil liberties dismantled. It doesn't just affect terrorists and foreigners, it affects us all.

Do we fear terrorism so much that we throw out our Constitution, and are we unwilling and afraid to debate our Constitution?

How far are we to go in pursuit of greater security at the cost of essential liberties?

We give up our liberties too casually [in emergencies and crises]

Since 9/11, our government has treated the Bill of Rights with about as much reverence as a “Keep Off the Grass” sign.

… the war on terrorism will serve as the justification for restraints on civil liberties.

Since the first Patriot Act, as this has evolved, more and more of the privacy of Americans is disappearing. And that’s going to hurt us; it’s not going to make us safer.

I’d rather risk being a terrorists victim than live under a surveillance state.

There comes a time, there comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer. That time is now and I will not let the Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic of acts go unchallenged.

I will not let the patriot act, the most un-patriotic of acts, go unchallenged.

I suppose the Green Party doesn't care for the anti-civil libertarian provisions of the notoriously named Patriot Act, invading privacy, and being able to search your home, and not tell you for 72 hours.

How much liberty do with want to give up for a false sense of security?

The Patriot Act is ludicrous. Terrorists have proved that they are interested in total genocide, not subtle little hacks of the U.S. infrastructure, yet the government wants a blank search warrant to spy and snoop on everyone's communications.

I would have never signed the Patriot Act. I would have never signed the National Defense Authorization Act allowing for arrests and detainment of you and me as U.S. citizens without being charged.

The first thing I said to myself on 9/11 was, 'There go our civil rights.' I found out by comparing notes later that George Carlin and I both said that at the exact same time. That's the first thing that popped into our head.

The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security.

This has been the new normal since September 11. Everyone knows, but nobody says, that if something happens again, the elite consensus in this country, and the overwhelming consensus of the citizenry, will be to pitch the Bill of Rights out the window and start rounding folks up.

This thing called Patriot Act, through which we abdicated a lot of our civil rights to defend the country against terrorism, it's a four-year story.

You talked about national identity cards and the terrorism bill. We have made a government that has grown used to viewing us as subjects, has grown used to seeing its role as commanding us.

Many of the benefits from keeping terrorism fear levels high are obvious. Private corporations suck up massive amounts of Homeland Security cash as long as that fear persists, while government officials in the National Security and Surveillance State can claim unlimited powers and operate with unlimited secrecy and no accountability.

Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.

In a country where Americans sense, quite genuinely, that their freedoms have been taken away by the government - as in the U.S. Patriot Act, as in NSA surveillance - people feel powerless.

I call it the 'House of Reprehensibles.' We don't have any real political resistance to this growth of the domestic state across the board. So I'm much more focused on that than on the Patriot Act, which is a real effort, however inept, to deal with a real problem.