When all the objectives of government include the achievement of equality - other than equality before the law - that government poses a threat to liberty.
Here in Europe some of the challenges have to do with structures that are so complicated. You've got Brussels, and you've got parliament, you've got councils and then you've got national governments. So people sometimes don't feel as if they know who's making decisions, and the more that we can bring people in and engage them, the better. Some of it is also cultural and social, people's sense of identity.
Government is merely an attempt to express the conscience of everybody, the average conscience of the nation, in the rules that everybody is commanded to obey. That is all it is.
We should use this public sphere and redefine - beyond China's borders - what a government is allowed to do, where its powers end and where the realm of a citizen's privacy begins.
It's a new phenomenon in America that states can now sue the national government and become a kind of check and balance on the excesses of the federal government.
Should one whole year from this July 4th pass while the crimes of this government are allowed to continue, we may have passed the point at which non-violent revolution becomes impossible.
As president, I decided that a strong, confident America could advance our national security by engaging directly with the Iranian government. We've seen the results.