Voicing opposition to the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950
Context: The whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a national characteristic of the police state, not of democracy. The history of Soviet Russia is a modern example of this ancient practice. I must, in good conscience, protest against any unnecessary suppression of our rights as free men. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats.
“Democracies owe their existence to national loyalties — the loyalties that are supposedly shared by government and opposition, by all political parties, and by the electorate as a whole. Wherever the experience of nationality is weak or non-existent, democracy has failed to take root. For without national loyalty, opposition is a threat to government, and political disagreements create no common ground.”
England and the Need for Nations (2006)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Roger Scruton 45
English philosopher 1944–2020Related quotes
Czar Nicholas II
1905
Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, 1891-1910 (1992) ed. Louis J. Budd
16th All India Session- Chanakya Nagar, Patna – 28-30 December - 1969
Quotes from ataljee.org
Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism, Macmillan, 1961 (p.16). Also quoted in Andrew Vincent, Modern Political Ideologies, Wiley, 2009 (p.318).
Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 267
Michael J. Chapman and Senator Michele Bachmann, "How New U.S. Policy Embraces a State-Planned Economy" (2001)
2000s