Senator Daniel K. Inouye speaking of John Poindexter and Oliver North during 1987 Senate Hearings on the Iran-contra affair. He is disucssing their riding rough should over our constitution.
"This is a dangerous world," they said. That my fellow citizens is an excuse for autocracy, not policy. Becuase no times were more danerous than when our country was born, when revolution was our midwife. Our system of government has withstood the tests and tensions of civil conflict, the depression and two world wars, times hardly less challenging than our own present. Indeed as our greatest military leaders, such as Washington, Marshall, and Eisenhower, have recognized, our form of government is what gives us strength. It must be safeguarded, particularly when times are dangerous and the temptation to arrogant power is the greatest. Vigilance abroad does not require us to abandon our ideas of rule of law at home. On the contrary, without our principles and without our ideals we have little that is special or worthy to defend.
How soon we forget and how little things change.
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