A Quote by Calvin Coolidge
One of the greatest perils to an extensive republic is the disregard of individual rights.
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You may ask what kind of a republic I dream of. Let me reply: I dream of a republic independent, free, and democratic, of a republic economically prosperous and yet socially just; in short, of a humane republic which serves the individual and which therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve it in turn. Of a republic of well-rounded people, because without such it is impossible to solve any of our problems, human, economic, ecological, social, or political.
Ours is a representative republic with a Constitution in which is recognized the natural law and the natural rights of man. It is a republic with a spiritual foundation characterized by freedom - freedom for the individual and for his society.
Any group or "collective," large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the "rights" of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking... A group, as such, has no rights.
Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression "individual rights"? is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today's intellectual chaos). But the expression "collective rights"? is a contradiction in terms.
Even though we may focus first on the rights of our own country, that does not mean that we should disregard the rights of everyone else.
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
I will never surrender the rights of the individual - the complete rights of the individual - to any "ism" whatever.
Perhaps it will be found that to obtain a just republic (and it is to secure our just rights that we resort to government at all) it must be so extensive as that local egoisms may never reach its greater part; that on every particular question, a majority may be found in its councils free from particular interests, and giving, therefore, an uniform prevalence to the principles of justice.
If the meanest man in the republic is deprived of his rights,then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights.
Did I say "republic?" By God, yes, I said "republic!" Long live the glorious republic of the United States of America. Damn democracy. It is a fraudulent term used, often by ignorant persons but no less often by intellectual fakers, to describe an infamous mixture of socialism, graft, confiscation of property and denial of personal rights to individuals whose virtuous principles make them offensive.
Not even the apparently enlightened principle of the 'greatest good for the greatest number' can excuse indifference to individual suffering. There is no test for progress other than its impact on the individual.
We talk a lot about individual rights, but in fact Americans are very willing to give up our individual rights if it means our property values will be protected, and so on.
My office has been one of the most scrupulous in the country with regard to the protection of individual rights. I've been on record for years in law journals and books as championing the rights of the individual against the oppressive power of the state
My belief has always been... that wherever in this land any individual's constitutional rights are being unjustly denied, it is the obligation of the federal government-at point of bayonet if necessary-to restore that individual's constitutional rights
My office has been one of the most scrupulous in the country with regard to the protection of individual rights. I've been on record for years in law journals and books as championing the rights of the individual against the oppressive power of the state.
Marriage would change hardly anything between us, except that we would end our arguments in a much more satisfying way. And of course I would have extensive legal rights over your body, your property, and all your individual freedoms, but I don't see what's so alarming about that.
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