Gerry Spence Quotes
To bargain freedom for security is the devil's bargain. Having made the bargain, one enjoys neither freedom nor security.
Gerry Spence, Defense Attorney, Give Me Liberty! Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century, 1998
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
After 4 years as president he became less idealistic. See {633099}.
There has in the United States, since the Constitution was ratified, a tension in every war or conflict, where some Americans wanted to reduce civil rights in order to better cope with the conflict and others observed that what we were fighting for is precisely those civil rights and liberties. John Adams and the Federalists, did not want anyone to be allowed to publicly criticize the Government while we were in conflict with Great Britain. They passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Thomas Jefferson and the Republicans felt that that the freedom should not be given up in the name of national security—we could prevail without that incursion on rights. They repealed the Adams laws. In WWI, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson wanted to jail anyone who claimed that the military draft was improper, immoral or illegal, and he did. Republicans, when they assumed office, then released the prisoners and restored freedom of speech. In the war on terror, most Republicans like sessions, wanted to torture prisoners, allow the imprisonment of suspected terrorists indefinitely without any charges or trial, and bug American telephone calls without the usually required court warrants. Democrats disagreed. That stimulated Sessions statement.
This quotation is particularly interesting when compared with {633126} that he said in his First Inaugural Address. His idealism was tempered some by his first 4 years in the Presidency.
A slight variant of this quotation appears in the base of the Statue of Liberty.
Bevin urged greatly increased defense spending regardless of cost:
The President was arguing for a large budgetary increase for the Defense Department.
In England there was an eye on American McCarthyism and its excesses.
Describing the right under the Constitution for the deposed military dictator, Augusto Pinochet, as a former head of state to become a Lifetime Senator:
Gerald Leonard Spence is a semi-retired American trial lawyer. He is a member of the American Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame. Spence has never lost a criminal case either as a prosecutor or a defense attorney, and has not lost a civil case since 1969.
