Josh's blog

“ The relationship of the citizenry to the government changes dramatically when it knows that they have a government that no longer adheres to [the rule of law]. Because I think in an ideal free society the way things work is that people who wield power have a healthy fear of the people over whom they wield power: they fear the consequences of what will happen if they abuse their power. But in a tyrannical state, by definition, that gets reversed and the citizenry fears the government because they know there’s nothing constraining it from doing whatever it wants, that these lines that we’ve imposed are simply being disregarded without consequence. ”

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Along with our freedom to live our lives as we will comes an obligation to allow others to do the same. We don’t live in isolation. We live in a society, a government for and by the people. We are responsible for each other. We have the right to worship freely and safely; that right was denied to Sikhs in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The right to assemble peacefully; that right was denied shoppers in Clackamas, Oregon, and moviegoers in Aurora, Colorado.

That most fundamental set of rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, fundamental rights that were denied to college students at Virginia Tech and high school students at Columbine and elementary school students in Newtown; and kids on street corners in Chicago on too frequent basis to tolerate; and all the families who never imagined they’d lose a loved one to — to a bullet, those rights are at stake. We’re responsible.

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“ Our destiny is in no-one else’s hands but our own: we alone bear the responsibility for deciding what the nature of our government and society will be, what advantage we will take of our human and material resources, what kind of place our children will inherit. ”

“ There’s no question that government plays a role. You can’t have a free economy without rules and regulations… Of course you need to have regulation in a free society, but you need it modernized, updated, not burdensome, and its objective is not only to protect us from the bad guys and the bad actors — important as that is — it’s also to encourage the success of the good guys. You want them to be productive, you want our industries to lead the world. ”

“ The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position… The American Dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. ”

“ The miracle of a genuinely democratic society is that every person is given a chance to live up to his or her dreams and I guess when I met President Kennedy, apart from it just being a real kick for me—I mean I was 16 years old, I thought it was fabulous—it was a kind of a concrete manifestation that if I wanted a career in public service maybe I could have one. ”