Justice & Law Quote by Malcolm Wallop

Rights are framed here as older than the state, sturdier than any statute, and therefore beyond the government’s authority to bargain away in a panic. Wallop’s sentence is built like a legal tripwire: if government didn’t grant rights in the first place, it can’t legitimately revoke them now. That “does not and did not” does heavy lifting, closing off the convenient loophole that emergencies create - the idea that exceptional moments require exceptional suspensions.

The real target is not government in the abstract but a familiar political move: laundering restriction through anxiety. “Fear as its justification” names the tactic without naming the crisis, which is precisely why it works. By refusing specifics, Wallop makes the quote portable across eras of national alarm - terrorism, crime waves, border scares, pandemics. The subtext is that the state is always tempted to treat fear as a renewable resource: amplify it, cite it, then convert it into authority.

There’s also an implicit indictment of citizens and media ecosystems that reward that transaction. Fear isn’t just something government “uses”; it’s something an audience can be coached into demanding. Wallop, a conservative politician, is tapping a small-government tradition that distrusts centralized power even when it arrives wrapped in protection. The line draws a bright boundary between safety policy and rights policy, warning that once rights become contingent on mood, they’re no longer rights - they’re permissions.