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"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

• js2 11y ago
  Here's an interesting historical fact I have dug up in some research for an essay I am writing about the relationship between liberty and security: That famous quote by Benjamin Franklin that “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” does not mean what it seems to say. Not at all. https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said And maybe it doesn't matter so much what Franklin was actually trying to say because the quotation means so much to us in terms of the tension between government power and individual liberties. But I do think it is worth remembering what he was actually trying to say because the actual context is much more sensitive to the problems of real governance than the flip quotation's use is, often. http://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century http://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous...
  • thatcat 11y ago
    from npr link: >Far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation. >It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security.