Daily Inspiration Quote by Barbara Amiel

Liberty is supposed to feel clean. Amiel’s line dirties it on purpose, forcing a confrontation with the least marketable feature of liberal democracy: rights don’t come with a moral screening process. By putting “me” and “members of the Mafia” in the same sentence, she collapses the comforting distinction between deserving citizens and corrupt outsiders. The shock isn’t just rhetorical; it’s diagnostic. If you’re tempted to carve out an exception for criminals, you’re already negotiating away the principle you claim to cherish.

The specific intent reads as a warning shot at selective civil libertarianism, the kind that celebrates free speech, due process, and privacy until the beneficiary is someone repellent. “The same liberty” is doing heavy lifting: it suggests a single, indivisible architecture of protections. Once you start building trapdoors into that architecture - special powers, looser standards, “just this one time” shortcuts - they don’t stay confined to gangsters. They migrate, quietly, to political opponents, dissidents, or simply the unlucky.

The subtext is an uncomfortable bargain: a society that values freedom must tolerate its misuse. That’s not sentimental; it’s structural. Amiel’s choice of “Mafia” is strategic because it carries cultural certainty. Few readers will feel sympathy, which makes the reader’s own reflex toward repression visible.

Contextually, this sits in the late-20th-century arguments over policing, surveillance, and the expansion of state power in the name of order. Amiel’s provocation insists that the true test of liberty isn’t how it treats the admirable; it’s whether it survives contact with the contemptible.