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No nation has ever fought a tough war without overriding for the duration some of the civil liberties of its people. The war we are fighting is more than a tough war; it is a mortal struggle in which the life of constitutional democracy throughout the world is at stake. It presents a new kind of challenge to the vitality of American civil liberty. We know from grim experience that in the peace which follows a tough war, civil liberty faces new and increased dangers. High-keyed energies and emotions, suddenly released, seek a new outlet. Wartime patriotism tends to become peacetime intolerance, and wherever there is intolerance, the traditional civil liberties of unpopular minority groups are in grave danger of being brutally suppressed. The peace which will follow the war we are now fighting will be without precedent in the complexity of its problems, the power of the emotional reactions which it will generate, and the strength of the triumphant determination of our people to preserve intact the fruits of victory. This peace will bring in its wake an unprecedented temptation to abridge some of our basic civil liberties, and this new threat will be very dangerous indeed. This is the general subject which I wish to explore.What I have to say falls into three parts. First, I wish to review some of the salient features of our national experience with civil liberty problems down to the eve of the present war; and by experience I mean our thinking about these problems as well as our behavior with respect to them.

Hobbes has been long accused of providing a political philosophy that threatens individual liberty. While some commentators have tried to rescue him from this criticism, little attention has been paid to the specifics of his statements on such topics as freedom of speech, censorship, & property rights. In this paper, I examine what Hobbes says on these issues & conclude that his overwhelming priority is to defend liberty once peace has been secured. I conclude by suggesting that Hobbes's political project has some similarities with current liberal proceduralist theories of justice. 23 References. Adapted from the source document.