Imperceptible Steps

The privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps.  Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence.  But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen – a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a life.
—     William O. Douglas
From:  Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323
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On This Day In:
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2020	The Doggie Dab
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2019	#LyingDonald’s Problem With The News And Truth
2018	Oh, Hell
2017	No Welcome Mat Here
2016	Making It Up
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2015	We Are All Explorers
2014	Still Trying To Cope
2013	Dear Diary (A good chuckle!)
2012	Conveniently Sequential
2011	King’s Speech Number Four
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Inviting Dispute

A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute.  It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it invites a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.  Speech is often provocative and challenging.  It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it passes for acceptance of an idea.
—     William O. Douglas
From:  Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1
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On This Day In:
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2021	Life Is…
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2020	Why #DonTheCon Hates, Belittles And Fires Honest Government Employees
2019	What Do You Want?
2018	Wakanda Forever
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2017	In Defense Of A Free Press
2016	Lost Opportunity
2015	Are You Listening Ladies?
2014	Practice, Practice, Practice
2013	A Fist Full Of Confusion
2012	Teaching Faith
2011	The Heart Of Terror
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Restructuring Persistent Futility

The truth is that a vast restructuring of our society is needed if remedies are to become available to the average person.  Without that restructuring the good will that holds society together will be slowly dissipated…  It is that sense of futility which permeates the present series of protests and dissents.  Where there is a persistent sense of futility, there is violence;  and that is where we are today.
—     William O. Douglas
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On This Day In:
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2021	Democracy, Pandemic, Economy And Climate Change
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2020	Hoping For #46 In January 2021
2019	Interesting, But Not Fascinating
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2018	Me, Too
2017	Apt Enough?
2016	Now Or Ever
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2015	I Am Shocked, Sir, Shocked…
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2014	Less Difficult
2013	The Spirit Of Liberty
2012	The Essential Freedom Of Aloneness
2011	A Problem Of Scale
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2010	Another Book, Another Jog…

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Finding Richness

I learned early that the richness of life is found in adventure.  Adventure calls on all the faculties of mind and spirit.  It develops self-reliance and independence.  Life then teems with excitement.  But man is not ready for adventure unless he is rid of fear.  For fear confines him and limits his scope.  He stays tethered by strings of doubt and indecision and has only a small and narrow world to explore.
—     William O. Douglas
Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court
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On This Day In:
2022	Enduring Success
2021	Dealing With Trumpism, Racism and Fascism In America
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2020	And So Must Good Government
2019	Are You Done Watching?
2018	Spineless Capitulation By The Democrats
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2017	Sincerely Yours
2016	Only Good To Say
2015	A Series Of Temporary Conditions
2014	Gaps
2013	Duty
2012	Cost Not Price
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2011	The Simple Normalcy Of Everyday Life – “Squirrel!”

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The Dissent We Witness

Man is about to be an automaton;  he is identifiable only in the computer.  As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman.  The dissent we witness is a reaffirmation of faith in man;  it is protest against living under rules and prejudices and attitudes that produce the extremes of wealth and poverty and that make us dedicated to the destruction of people through arms, bombs, and gases, and that prepare us to think alike and be submissive objects for the regime of the computer.
—    William O. Douglas
Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court
[Resistance / dissent is – probably – already futile…    —    kmab]
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On This Day In:
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2021	Be Creative, Question Assumptions
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2020	I’ll Eat To That (Gemütlichkeit)
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2019	#ContinueToResist
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2018	More Executive Time For #DumbDonald
2017	Watched The Inauguration
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2016	Come Dance And Laugh With Me
2015	Looks Good To Me
2014	Desire For The Sea
2013	The Fierce Urgency Of NOW
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2012	One Path
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2011	Emergent Practicality

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The Darkness Of 6 January 2021

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights we designed to get the government off the backs of the people — all the people.  Those great documents guarantee to us all the rights to personal and spiritual self-fulfillment.  But that guarantee is not self-executing.  As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression.  In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged.  And it is in such a twilight that we all must be most aware of the change in the air — however slight — lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
—     William O. Douglas
[Thinking back to the riot at the Capitol Building and the attempted coup by disgraced / former President Trump and his followers, I am reminded that “civilization” (like our liberties) is in a constant struggle with the “jungle” and the jungle never gives up in its struggle to reclaim whatever has been lost.  It is up to each American to support / promote our democracy and Constitutional Republic.  Trump remains an announced candidate for 2024.  The darkness remains at the edge of democracy.    —    kmab]
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On This Day In:
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2020	Fearless Security
2019	I Prefer A Neat Single Malt
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2017	Something That Is Absolute
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2015	In Time
2014	Robust Interconnectivity
2013	What Have We Here?
2012	Tributaries And Eddies
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2011	Penultimate

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Equal Protection Under Law

The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.
—    Justice William O. Douglas
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On This Day In:
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2015	Or You Don’t
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2013	Glory Days (part 2)
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Wavelengths Of The Earth

Only when there is a wilderness can man harmonize his inner being with the wavelengths of the earth.  When the earth, its products, its creatures, become his concern, man is caught up in a cause greater than his own life and more meaningful.  Only when man loses himself in an endeavor of that magnitude does he walk and live with humanity and reverence.
—    Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
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On This Day In:
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2017	Out Of Luck
2016	Wavelengths Of The Earth
2015	God Said What To You?
2014	Not Saying
2013	Ears And Tongue
2012	The Story Of Joe (Middle-Class Republican)
2011	Happy Birthday, Diana
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Begin Combat

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas.  The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.
—    Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
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2018	But Much Is Worth Learning
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2016	Starting To Stumble
2015	Begin Combat
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2014	Just Dig ‘N It, Why?
2013	Additions
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2012	Telling Her
2011	On Torture

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Adaptive Security

Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.
—    William O. Douglas
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2019	I Think I’m Repeating Myself
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2018	No Reason To Turn
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2016	Hoping For The Best Come January
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2013	Side Effects
2012	Just Trying To Earn A Living
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What The Framers Chose

The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do.  They too had lived in dangerous days;  they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought.  They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty.  They chose liberty.
—    William O. Douglas
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Sometimes I Feel Small

To be whole and harmonious, man must also know the music of the beaches and the woods.  He must find the thing of which he is only an infinitesimal part and nurture it and love it, if he is to live.
—     William O. Douglas
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2018	Worry (x2)
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2016	Power Inside
2015	Sometimes I Feel Small
2014	It Slipped Away
2013	Corollary
2012	Working Retired
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An Awful Ordeal

We must realize that today’s Establishment is the new George III.  Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know.  If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution.
Poets and authors have told us that our society has been surfeited with goods, that our people are mostly well-fed, that marketing and advertising devices have put into our hands all manner and form of gadgets to meet any whim, but that we are unhappy and not free.
The young generation sees this more clearly than their parents do.  The youngsters who rise up in protest have not formulated a program for action.  Few want to destroy the system.  The aim of most of them is to regain the freedom of choice that their ancestors lost, to be free, to be masters of their destiny.
We know by now that technology can be toxic as well as tonic.  We know by now that if we make technology the predestined force in our lives, man will walk to the measure of its demands.  We know how leveling that influence can be, how easy it is to computerize man and make him a servile thing in a vast industrial complex.
This means we must subject the machine – technology – to control and cease despoiling the earth and filling people with goodies merely to make money.  The search of the youth today is for ways and means to make the machine – and the vast bureaucracy of the corporation state and of the government that runs that machine – the servant of man.
That is the revolution that is coming.
That revolution – now that the people hold the residual powers of government – need not be a repetition of 1776.  It could be a revolution in the nature of an explosive political regeneration.  It depends on how wise the Establishment is.  If, with its stockpile of arms, it resolves to suppress the dissenters, America will face, I fear, an awful ordeal.
—    Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
From his book:   “Points of Rebellion“
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2017	Today Is Not Lost
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2016	Paying Attention
2015	An Awful Ordeal
2014	What Are You Doing?
2013	Lives > 1
2012	Strange To All The World
2011	Unnecessary Stagefright

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