Privacy is tremendously important. I believe the American people, and all people, should be skeptical of government power, should ask hard questions: What is the authority? What is the oversight? That's the way it ought to be.
I believe that Americans should be deeply skeptical of government power. You cannot trust people in power. The founders knew that. That's why they divided power among three branches, to set interest against interest.
Without the ability to talk about government power, there's no way for citizens to make sure this power isn't being misused.
We are a nation founded on distrust of government power, and questioning that power is essential to promoting transparency and accountability.
Democrats want to use government power to make people's lives go better; Republicans respond that people know more than politicians do. We think that both might be able to agree that nudging can maintain free markets, and liberty, while also inclining people in good directions.
Maher Arar's case stands as a sad example of how we have been too willing to sacrifice our core principles to overarching government power in the name of security, when doing so only undermines the principles we stand for and makes us less safe.
Many of Reagan's listeners thought he was dreaming. But Reagan had faith in freedom. He knew that communism, although militarily powerful, was ideologically dead. He knew what our Founders knew: that, in a truly legitimate government, power does not come out of the barrel of a gun, but only from the consent of the people.
If the government controls your health care, the government controls you. Obamacare was never about health care. It was about government power, dependency, and control.
Nothing for the Left, nothing the government does is ever about its superficial reason; it's only and always about expanding government power and control over you.
Obama's defiantly vowed not only to radically expand the reach of government from cradle to grave, but to smash the Constitution's restrictions on government power while doing it.
In our Constitution governmental power is divided among three separate branches of the national government, three separate branches of State governments, and the peoples of the several States.
Do not allow yourself to imagine that revolutionary thinking can be propagated by governmental power.
The founding leaders of our country believed in a three-part sharing of governmental power, with each branch jealously watching the actions of the other two.
While we don't have the authority on the state level to change federal policy, my fellow governors and I do have a duty to protect our states' citizens, and we have a personal responsibility to act when we have the power to do so.
A president's power is limited. We need to vote down the ballot as well, from your councilman all the way up to your governors and congressman.
I don't know what in the world happened. I don't know if it was the power of the prayer or God himself, but it just reached out, either while I was driving or walking down the sidewalk or sleeping, and it just - the power of God in Jesus just grabbed me... All of a sudden, I just believed in Jesus Christ. I did, I believed in him!
Our nation is too different, too diverse to say that what works in Massachusetts is somehow going to be grabbed by the federal government, usurping the power of states and imposing a one-size-fits-all plan on the nation. That will not work.
That's not to say Eddie's never done anything malicious. But he never grabbed power for power's sake. His position was gained only because he has that energy, and that's naturally where he ended up.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
I think a responsibility comes with notoriety, but I never think of it as power. It's more like something you hold, like grains of sand. If you keep your hand closed, you can have it and possess it, but if you open your fingers in any way, you can lose it just as quickly.
