Andrew P. Napolitano > Quotes

“Whenever we are attacked, people are willing to give up someone else's liberties for their own security.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano

“What is it about the government and its agents and employees that they can lie to us with impunity, but we risk being sent to jail if we lie to them?”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

“If exercising the right to vote were truly effective, the government would not be so eager to promote it.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

“Assaults by fanatics on our safety... does not justify assaults by the government on our freedom!”
― Andrew Napolitano

“Speech is one of the few abilities that human beings share across all creeds, faiths, races, and ethnicities. By nature, it connects us, it strengthens us, and it empowers us. Speech as affirmation or as dissent should be cherished and respected.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“No matter what they say, Democrats and Republicans in the United States do not control the government because they are best able to serve us and meet our needs. In fact, both parties couldn't care less about us.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

“Thanks to Progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, we are now living under a system where the president is forced to step in to stop a regulatory agency from promulgating regulations that Congress refused to enact.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom

“Both parties promote "changing Washington," but in reality they like Washington just the way it is: little gets done that they don't like, and none of our officials are truly held accountable.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

“This point still has great significance. In 2011, Congress passed the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) and expanded the possibility of indefinite detention of American citizens without trial.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“If I told you that a country passed laws that imprisoned a pastor for fifteen years for Christian pacifism, you might think I was talking of Iran. If I told you that a woman was imprisoned for ten years for criticizing her government, you might think I was speaking of the gulag in the Soviet Union. If I told you that a salesman was arrested and imprisoned for seven to twenty years for calling wartime regulations a big joke, you would think I was surely exaggerating or even making it up. I’m not. Each horrific injustice occurred in America, the land of the free.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“After September 11th, that all changed for the Pentagon and the CIA, and like the render and torture program, something which began under Clinton and expanded under Bush, would exponentially increase in power under the Obama administration.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“Up until September 4th 2001, the Department of Defense and CIA were still reluctant to utilize these creepy super-weapons, even to kill bin Laden.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“Justice William O. Douglas wrote, “The framers of the Constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom

“Alan Greenspan, who would later become the Federal Reserve chairman, wrote in 1966: [T]he earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy’s books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare and other purposes. . . . In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. . . . This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the “hidden” confiscation of wealth.24”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom

“The monarchy continued this tradition, and it migrated to America as soon as there was profit to be had.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

“Vice President Gore, Richard Clarke, and Madeleine Albright were “strong support[ers]” of the program, joining in President Clinton’s “intense” interest in it.5 Egypt’s most famous terrorist, Talaat Fouad Qassem, was “seized in Croatia, flown to the USS Adriatic, a navy warship, interrogated, then flown to Egypt for [torture and] execution.”6 Egypt’s secret police, the Gihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma, is widely known for its brutal torture regime, “real Macho interrogation . . . enhanced interrogation techniques on steroids” and was used by both Presidents Bush and Clinton.7 Congress attempted to end this program in 1998. The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act slipped in a passage making it the policy of the United States not to “expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.”8 Clinton vetoed the bill in late October,”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“On Election Day, we select our representatives by secret ballot, and we choose our candidates based on their ability to protect our individual rights, not the rights of the group of people with which we most closely identify.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

“Many people lay the blame at Bush’s feet for beginning weaponized drone warfare, but in reality it was President Clinton who began the U.S. weaponized drone program.1 After an aerial drone spotted bin Laden in October 2000, President Clinton was frustrated that he could not simply push a button to end the life of the man who had sullied his foreign policy and national security records. President Clinton “gave orders to create an armed drone force.”2 That program came to fruition under President Bush when on June 18th 2004, the first weaponized drone struck in Waziristan.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“Legislators redistrict all the time to achieve desired results. They group people together based on how they think they will vote. There is something fundamentally wrong with this tactic; it is unconstitutional, it is manipulative, it is patronizing, and it infringes upon all citizens' right to vote.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

“Slavery was a tradition embedded in the culture of the South and played a key economic role there. Its economic importance was the key factor impending abolition. Nevertheless, slavery is morally reprehensible, and completely indefensible, and the fact that many Americans, including the Founding Fathers, recognized that it was wrong, in a way makes us even more responsible for the crimes committed against the African-American race.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

“Before the 9/11 attack, the Bush administration cut counterterrorism funds, denied requests for more counterterrorism agents, threatened to veto additional counterterrorism spending, ignored numerous warnings about imminent attacks, and declared focusing on bin Laden a mistake.73 Later investigations would reveal, however, that at least seven months before 9/11, the Bush administration began domestic spying operations.74”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“Which would you choose: To be free or to be secure? State security and personal freedom often run along tense lines with each other, but our Constitution and its philosophical roots clearly bias freedom over safety.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“Only problem is, we the people are not asked to choose liberty or security. In fact, we the people are often misled to believe that the only way to protect the homeland is by acquiescing, by placing our freedoms at the feet of our protectors.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“Indeed, Lincoln’s test of a man is also a true test for a nation. To test a nation’s belief in freedom, challenge the people with the emotions of fear and vengeance that often accompany war.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“We must recognize that we do not have a two-party system in this country; we have one party, the big government party. There is a republican version that assaults our civil liberties and loves deficits and war, and a democratic version that assaults our commercial liberty and loves wealth transfers and taxes.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

“One of the reasons why people come to America is that there are fewer speed bumps to the top of the ladder in comparison with other countries.”
― Andrew Napolitano

“The theory of Woodrow Wilson’s era was that the Thirteenth Amendment did not apply to the government and that, when in war, the government could force individuals into the military or into a specific labor market.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom

“On September 11th 2001, bin Laden, al Qaeda, and his co-conspirators attacked the United States. During these attacks, suicide bombers struck the famous Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly three thousand people on American soil.1 It was hailed as a second Pearl Harbor, except the kamikaze pilots came at the start of the war rather than the end. America would react much like it did after Pearl Harbor. War hysteria reared its ugly head as freedom vanilla replaced French vanilla in cafeterias in the style of Wilsonesque-nomenclature propaganda.2 Civil rights and natural rights would be openly assaulted by a government sworn to protect them in one of the longest wars in American history. Randolph Bourne’s decried jingoism would return to the sounds of trumpets blaring and the sight of flags waving. The familiar phrase “Remember the Lusitania,” which became “Remember Pearl Harbor,” became “Remember 9/11.” Anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment filled the country as America waxed hysterical, crying for “us” to “get those towelheads.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“Republicans remained purely about small government until they started their unlawful and unnecessary wars. The first was Nixon’s and later Reagan’s and Bush’s War on Drugs, and the second was George W. Bush’s War on Terror. These wars enlarged government, increased spending, enhanced regulation, took away the rights of the American people, and were largely ineffective.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom

“You agree to pay me X dollars for this book, and I agree upon receipt of the X dollars to deliver you the book. The right to enter into that agreement is a natural right; the right to have that agreement enforced is one of the aspects of human freedom that governments exist in order to protect.”
― Judge Andrew P. Napolitano