"No tyranny in history has ever been established overnight. The method of dictators has always been a slow, gradual, well-calculated series of measures, each one of them seemingly innocent enough, easily alibied and explained by the ruler as embodying the best intentions in the world, and not one of them clear, direct and sufficiently flagrant to make the entire people--every single man on the street--realize that it affects him personally.

Each measure is passed without great trouble or violent public opposition because the average man does not see at the time how it can possibly affect his own existence--the only thing he is really interested in. Then, one day, he awakens suddenly to realize all his rights and liberties are gone. He cannot say exactly how or when it happened. He sees only the cumulative effect of single measures he did not consider important at the time he accepted them.  He may be horrified and he may want to scream in protest. But it is too late to protest.

The vast majority of Americans have not the slightest interest in politics. They think that whatever happens in Washington applies only to a vague entity called "the country" and perhaps to those vague arch-villians, the big corporations, but the worst effect it can possibly have on them, the private citizens personally, is the slight nuisance of increased taxes. They take their civil rights for granted and haven't the slightest idea of what makes these rights possible.  Hasn't the time come to point out to them that they have no rights whatever, not even the right to remain alive, unless there exists some institution to protect and guarantee these rights to them?

If all the power in the country is centered in one hand--who is going to see that that hand exercises it correctly? And if those in power wish to take a citizen's life--who can stop them by pointing to the law, when they are the law? What good is a constitution when there is no one to see that it is observed? Russia has a liberal constitution too, yet Russian citizens can be executed without trial. Their constitution makers conveniently forgot to provide an independent organ to watch that the constitution be obeyed.

Germany has elections too, only there's no independent organization to check on the polls. Does everybody understand that a constitution is not written to protect the government from the people, but to protect the people from the government? A constitution is only a people's safeguard. And if this safeguard is left entirely at the mercy of those against whom it is supposed to guard--isn't it just as absurd and useless as a lock placed on a door against burglars, with the key entrusted to the burglars?"

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