There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberties, only a long staircase where each step downward must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it's Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, the expansion of women's rights or, now, gay rights, I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.
Most liberals think of civil liberties as their Achilles heel. It isn't.
The way I think liberties get eroded is not that all of a sudden you become an Orwellian state, but gradually it becomes harder for people with unpopular views to speak out without being in danger, be it from the state or just from the majority of the people who don't like them.
There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.
Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others - we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.
The idea that we can make all things safe for all behaviors is in itself a dangerous and slippery slope.
For two decades the state has been taking liberties, and these liberties were once ours.
Whenever we take away the liberties of those whom we hate we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy.