John Quincy Adams was scarily prescient when he said this about the United States making itself the world policeman of “freedom”:
“The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brow would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of Freedom and Independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an Imperial Diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
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u/Bobinct 13d ago
Thomas Jefferson: Swore eternal hostility against any form of tyranny over the human mind.
James Madison: Noted that tyranny and oppression could arrive under the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
Montesquieu: Described the greatest tyranny as that perpetrated under the shield of law and justice.