"Special temporary measures that may not be appropriate in normal times"

“All political projects that neglect human nature and disregard the lessons drawn from centuries of political experience have to compensate for their lack of realism by a disproportionately high degree of intervention in both the social fabric and in human minds. It often means annexing those areas of human existence in which [freedom from coercion] typically expresses itself and is most needed, such as education, rule-making, culture, thinking, social practices, and language.”

— Ryszard Legutko in The Cunning of Freedom: Saving the Self in an Age of False Idols

The Prime Minister has neither self-confidence nor the confidence of the Canadian people. Resorting to the Emergency Act demonstrates his cowardice and desperation.

Man does not want to choose. He wants to be chosen.

“There is no feeling more desperate than being free to choose, and yet without the specific compulsion of being chosen. After all, one does not really choose; one is chosen. This is one way of stating the difference between gods and men. Gods choose; men are chosen. What men lose when they become as free as gods is precisely that sense of being chosen, which encourages them, in their gratitude, to take their choices seriously. Put in another way, this means: Freedom does not exist without responsibility. ”

— Philip Rieff in The Triumph of the Therapeutic