LewRockwell.com Blog: Contempt for the Constitution

"Notice that Bush’s outburst came during a discussion of the USA Patriot Act, and McCloy’s during a discussion of removing and confining persons alleged (but not proven) to pose a threat to national security. Notice further that the USA Patriot Act was never necessary for the protection of the country, and neither was the action to remove and confine the Japanese and Japanese-Americans. Existing laws and legal due process would have sufficed to deal with the prevailing conditions in both cases. The government in the early 1940s and again in the early 1990s simply grabbed and exercised great powers while the public, ignorant of the true situation, allowed its groundless fears and ethnic prejudices to dominate its thinking."

"In every such national emergency, precisely when constitutional restraints on the government are most desperately needed, the Constitution becomes nothing but a scrap of paper. Government leaders understand this fact, and they speak and act accordingly."

LewRockwell.com Blog: Contempt for the Constitution