Tradeoffs Quotes
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.
See {632309} for an similar French Political expression made at approximately the same time over an important principle. However, commerce in its many forms such as business and job creation has been the major reason for compromising important moral and political principles during much of recorded history.
During the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution some powerful Frenchmen in the French Colonies wanted to maintain the caste system to keep the Blacks and other indigenous people from claiming equal rights. They claimed that the colonies would perish. But the French Revolutionaries were committed to “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity”, and Barnave summed up their viewpoint in this succinct statement of policy which became a memorable quotation.
He was not advocating this level of military presence. He was explaining that there is a trade-off between safety and civil rights and quality of life.
Legislation that harms some individuals is proper
Johnson thought that he was 5 votes short to pass the Economic Opportunity Act to launch his War on Poverty. This quotation shows the master of Presidential vote getting in action. Jones came from a very conservative and racist district in Florida. In addition to the general conservative concern about the bill. White Southern racists were still angry about the Civil Rights Act that had just passed and saw the anti-poverty programs as another opportunity for the Federal Government to have racially integrated employment and training programs in the South. If Jones voted for the anti-poverty bill, he might well be defeated in the 1966 election. The President promised to appoint him as a Federal Judge—a lifetime appointment—if he were defeated. A potential problem was that there would not likely be a vacant judgeship open in Alabama. Johnson promised that he would create another judgeship for Jones if necessary—a judgeship that was not really needed. Jones was reelected and President Johnson did not have to create a new judgeship.
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.
