26. (Paragraph 147) If you think that more effective law enforcement is unequivocally good because it suppresses crime, then remember that crime as defined by the system is not necessarily what YOU would call crime. Today, smoking marijuana is a "crime," and, in some places in the U.S.., so is possession of ANY firearm, registered or not, may be made a crime, and the same thing may happen with disapproved methods of child-rearing, such as spanking. In some countries, expression of dissident political opinions is a crime, and there is no certainty that this will never happen in the U.S., since no constitution or political system lasts forever.
If a society needs a large, powerful law enforcement establishment, then there is something gravely wrong with that society; it must be subjecting people to severe pressures if so many refuse to follow the rules, or follow them only because forced. Many societies in the past have gotten by with little or no formal law-enforcement.
Industrial Society and Its Future, by FC; The Unabomber's Manifesto.
If a Negro blows up a building, many people are willing to understand it. But when a white Harvard graduate blows up a building, you know there's something wrong with the educational system. There's no way to rationalize it. The counter-culturists simply do not have the right to burn down The System. Change will occur, but most change will occur through evolution and representative democracy -- not through terror or revolution. Lead a revolution, okay -- don't be surprised if you're put in jail or shot to death.
Herman Kahn, Herman Kahnsciousness, The Megaton Ideas of the One-Man Think Tank Produced by Jerome Agel, Copyright 1973. All rights reserved. I believe this short quote is within "Fair Use" guidelines.
I am a history teacher by background, and I would assert and defend on any campus in this country that it is impossible to maintain civilization with twelve-year-olds having babies, with fifteen-year-olds killing each other, with seventeen-year-olds dying of AIDS, and with eighteen-year-olds ending up with diplomas they can't even read. And that what is at issue is literally not Republican or Democrat or Liberal or Conservative, but the question of whether or not our civilization will survive.
NEWTON L. GINGRICH Speaker-Elect of the U.S. House of Representatives
11/11/94 Speech to Washington Research Group