Our 50-year struggle against the Soviet Union conditioned us to think in terms of external threats to our freedom. But the biggest threats to freedom usually come from within.
Freedom is lost once a people come to believe that the ends justify the means.
Polls show that this is what has happened in the case of Elian. Those are the words of Harvard University constitutional scholar and Clinton supporter Laurence H. Tribe. Inattentive, befuddled and spun by the media, Americans don't see how returning a boy to his father could possibly be a threat to their freedom. But Hitler's power owed much to his lawless use of force. If a court decision went against one of Hitler's purposes, he simply ignored it.