Franklin Pierce Quotes
We have to maintain inviolate the great doctrine of the inherent right of popular self-government; to reconcile the largest liberty of the individual citizen with complete security of the public order; to render cheerful obedience to the laws of the land, to unite in enforcing their execution, and to frown indignantly on all combinations to resist them; to harmonize a sincere and ardent devotion to the institutions of religious faith with the most universal religious toleration; to preserve the rights of all by causing each to respect those of the other; to carry forward every social improvement to the uttermost limit of human perfectibility
Franklin Pierce, 1804-1869, 14th President of the United States (Democrat, NH), State of the Union Message, 1854
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is a classic Egyptian political technique. Egyptian political leaders espouse democratic values and endorse human rights, but control and regulate the actual exercise of rights so that “unacceptable” groups or people can never really assemble or protest. They make an application to demonstrate and find themselves arrested or “detained” so the Egyptians can say that no one is refused the right to assemble. Their permit was not denied.
Jefferson and others insisted on a Bill of Rights where rights were explicit and not inferred or dependent on the goodness of the particular government in power.
in the form of legislation For "everyone doing what is right in his own eyes", compare Judges 17:6
Franklin Pierce was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. A northern Democrat who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation, he alienated anti-slavery groups by supporting and signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, yet these efforts failed to stem conflict between North and South. The South eventually seceded and the American Civil War began in 1861.
