Suicide Pact Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Moreover, he attacked the natural right of people to elect their own government in the same fashion as the predecessor he denounced and claimed further war powers. The Bush-Obama Wars maintained the health of the state in terms of fear and government power, however, Obama would also claim he could wage a geographically unlimited war on terror through the AUMF.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“Bush was the great “tragedy,”3 but Obama has become the great hypocrite. He took on the mantle of his predecessor’s wars and expanded on his powers just as Bush had expanded on Clinton’s.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“Unlike what happened after Pearl Harbor, however, the Bush administration would not order a “review of how they could have been so badly surprised” because the results would have shown “a colossal bureaucratic failure, combined with inattention and a lack of political will at the top.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“In his 1999 book, Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, Robert B. Stinnett, a navy photographer who served in the same World War II aerial group as former President George H. W. Bush, used documents acquired from a Freedom of Information Act request to demonstrate definitively that FDR knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor in advance and let it go as part of his larger strategy to provoke the Japanese into war.185 The smoking guns included several declassified, U.S.-decoded Japanese naval broadcasts, and spy communiqués which set forth a timetable, a census, and bombing plans for U.S. ships at Pearl Harbor, at least the contents of which were relayed to FDR and his aides.186 In large part, the book discussed a particularly damning piece of evidence called the McCollum Memo, a six-page document written in October 1940—fourteen months before the attack on Pearl Harbor—and addressed to two senior FDR military advisors outlining the steps for provoking the Japanese into making an overt act of war.187”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“When our Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution—the successor document to the Articles of Confederation—they recognized that the proper role of government is not a nanny or Big Brother but a limited entity designed to protect the people’s natural liberties. “The Fathers rather frequently indicated that our rights were founded on the law of nature.”1 Almost uniformly, individuals like Madison, Jefferson, and Washington subscribed to the concept of the Natural Law and the inherent dignity of all persons:2 A dignity that bears with it the promise of “certain unalienable Rights, . . . among [which] are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“Franklin D. Roosevelt arrested Americans on the basis of their race and put them into concentration camps. He executed first and then sought judicial approval. He even stole millions of dollars in gold from innocent, law-abiding Americans. He no doubt fomented the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and then punished innocent military officers for not having caught him.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“Woodrow Wilson tricked the nation into fighting a useless war and then used the war as an excuse for punishing speech critical of his administration with long jail terms. He seized private property without paying for it and even arrested a rival presidential candidate.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty

“No rational society would long permit a justice system to stay in place in which everyone’s rights were diminished because the bank robber got caught. He is the bad guy, he chose to gamble his freedom for the loot he took, and he lost the gamble.”
― Andrew P. Napolitano, Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty