“They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security.” Benjamin Franklin
In a recent poll Americans were asked if they would give up a little freedom for additional security. To my amazement, 50% answered, “Yes.” So it seems a whole lot of people pin their hopes of security on our government’s ability to deliver it. I would guess that most Americans have no understanding of the Declaration of Independence, or our Constitution or Bill of Rights. Listen to what concerns most people and you will hear things like crime, housing, poverty, the homeless, social security but you will seldom if ever hear worries that our government no longer holds to the foundations upon which our country was laid. People don’t care what the government does as long as it takes care of them. We want to be secure and we want to be comfortable; in other words, we want the government to take care of us.
Now I don’t think our government has acted malevolently in eroding our individual freedoms, they just have made serious errors in judgment. The new-found powers to search and surveil, to have a national ID card, to have Google be required to turn over certain results of it’s search engine to the government will provide no guarantee of security. In fact, these powers could be seen as the slippery slope which the wrong people in a future administration could use for a far more sinister purpose.
The Gestapo and the KGB could arrest and kill anyone at any time for any reason all in the name of security which was actually the greatest threat to that security. Giving up freedom in no way insures that we will have more security.
Ironically, freedom does not guarantee security either. But the 9/11 tragedy, although it left thousands dead and disrupted our economy for a while, did not endanger our nation, our way of life. But the federal government did show that despite millions spent on defense it was unable to protect us entirely. If we give in to this rush toward ever-increasing state control of our society for the sake of security, the freedoms we have enjoyed may dwindle away.
Security is an illusion. Freedom is not.
Giving up freedom is not an option.
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