“In Australia, however, your right to know has never before been under so much pressure, as governments, bureaucracies and courts have all endeavoured to limit the amount of information that should be provided to the public. … The message is that democracy can be corrupted when dissenting voices are silenced.” ~ editorial “Guarding Freedom”, Gold Coast Bulletin, 2 May 2009
“Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard … freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.” ~ the US Supreme Court, decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 14 June 1943
“If there were a modern Spanish Inquisition in America today, it wouldn’t be Bob Jones rounding up Catholics. It would be liberals rounding up right-wingers and putting them on trial for hate crimes. The liberal Torquemadas would be smug and angry and self-righteous. And when they were done, they would proudly announce they had finally banished intolerance.” ~ Ann Coulter, Slander: Liberal lies about the American Right, 2002
“The greatest threat to democracy is the unbridled power of the state over its citizens.” ~ Mandy Hampton (played by Moira Kelly) in The West Wing (series 1, episode 7, The State Dinner), 10 November 1999
“Modern liberalism has strong totalitarian tendencies” ~ Archbishop George Pell (of Sydney, New South Wales), in a speech at Oxford University, 6 March 2009
Speak Your Mind