RE: Clinton on Personal Freedom Abuse

[thansen@moscow.com]

Thank you, Ron Force.  It makes alot more sense now that I have read the entire 
quote.

Tom Hansen

> A lot of Right-Wing sites quote this selectively.  Here's the entire
> statement:
> 
> ... a lot of the Asian societies that are doing very well now have low crime
> rates and high economic growth rates, partly because they have very coherent
> societies with strong units where the unit is more important than the
> individual, whether it's the family unit or the work unit or the community
> unit.
> My own view is that you can go to the extreme in either direction. And when
> we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution
> with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom
> to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would
> used it responsibly. That is, when we set up this country, abuse of people
> by government was a big problem. So if you read the Constitution, it's
> rooted in the desire to limit the ability of government's ability to mess
> with you, because that was a huge problem. It can still be a huge problem.
> But it assumed that people would basically be raised in coherent families,
> in coherent communities, and they would work for the common good, as well as
> for the individual welfare.
> 
> What's happened in America today is, too many people live in areas where
> there's no family structure, no community structure, and no work structure.
> And so there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's
> too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to
> move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend
> on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps
> and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities.
> So that's my answer to you. We can have -- the more personal freedom a
> society has, the more personal responsibility a society needs, and the more
> strength you need out of your institutions -- family, community and work.
> 
> -- Bill Clinton, President of the United States, on MTV's "Enough Is
> Enough."
> 
> 
> ********************************************
> Ron Force	      	  rforce@moscow.com
> Moscow Idaho USA
> ********************************************
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Tom Hansen [mailto:thansen@moscow.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 5:55 AM
> > To: John Harrell; vision2020
> > Subject: RE: Clinton on Personal Freedom Abuse
> >
> >
> > What's your point, Mr. Harrell?
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: John Harrell [mailto:johnbharrell@yahoo.com]
> > Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 9:31 PM
> > To: vision2020
> > Subject: Clinton on Personal Freedom Abuse
> >
> >
> > "When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical
> > Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount
> > of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans
> > who had that freedom would use it responsibly.... [However, now]
> > there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's
> > too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to
> > move to limit it."
> >
> >      -- Bill Clinton, 3-22-94, MTV's "Enough is Enough"
> >
> >
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> 


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