That one final­ly becomes the thing he vio­lent­ly fights is a fact that Hitler under­stood, in 1933, when he said, “The great strength of the total­i­tar­i­an state is that it forces those who fear it to imi­tate it.” It would be a trag­ic thing indeed if we Amer­i­cans were stripped of our free­dom by a for­eign and aggres­sive pow­er; it is all the more trag­ic that we grad­u­al­ly and some­what unknow­ing­ly give up our free­doms, one after anoth­er, in the pur­suit of that force which we claim will guard our liberty.

— Bayard Rustin [Source]