Willy Brandt Quotes on Emergency Laws: Passionate Defense of Democracy and Freedom!

"The threat to freedom in Germany does not come with violence and noise, but rather quietly. It comes with all sorts of justifications, often well-intentioned ones. For example, when it comes to civil rights. In times when we are all concerned about the threat of terrorism, when we all naturally have to do everything we can for our citizens so that they can live happy lives unharmed. In times like these, parties and politicians come along and say, 'Now is the time to once again gradually reduce civil rights, which always bother us a little anyway. Freedom always dies inch by inch, as Karl Herrman Flach once put it. And freedom does not die because of politicians, it does not die because politicians want to restrict civil rights and liberties, but rather it becomes dangerous for freedom when citizens forget their own immune system, which must arm them against any threat to freedom. And for me, that is the decisive self-image of our party. That we say: For us, the citizen comes first and then the state. Other parties trust the state first and only then trust the citizens. Under the pretext of creating security, every civil right can be called into question. Under the pretext that security requires it, every tightening of the law can be decided. We fight this wherever we can, in the federal government, in parliament, but ladies and gentlemen, we also need the citizens. We also need self-confident citizens who do not accept the statement: “If you have nothing to hide, you should not complain.” No, we want a nation of self-confident citizens, not subjects of the state." Guido Westerwelle

"It may be too late to avert the financial disaster that lies ahead of us, but we must at least prevent the road to financial ruin from also becoming a road to servitude. Let's talk our heads off and write our fingers to the bone, let's make ourselves outsiders and ridiculed figures if necessary, but let's fight to ensure that the basis of people's freedom, the market economy, is not presented to them as the alleged culprit and executed by the henchmen of power under the false pretext. Otherwise, it is we ourselves, our happiness and prosperity and freedom, who die with the market. Let us free ourselves from the true evil, from the fuel of presumptuous domination and destructive lies: from state counterfeit money." Roland Baader