"Freedom is not something that is given freely by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As Thomas Paine warned:
"An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty" because it leads a nation to stretch, to misinterpret and to misapply even the best of law."
To counter that tendency, he reminds us:
"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates that duty he establishes a precedent that would reach to himself."