Are you willing to give up your rights to feel safe?

[LuckyKBoxer]

a couple of the other threads have made me want to ask this question..
wish I could do a poll.

I would have the answers as...

a. Yes I am fine with giving up my rights to have less worry about criminals effecting me
b. No my rights are more important to me then allowing law enforcement another tool to use against crime
c. Yes I am fine being a sheep
d. No I will die fighting for my rights
e. I don't care, I like being ignorant and not having to worry about this one way or the other.
f. other...explain.

I would have to go with D. I would not want to die, but I would not allow my kids to live under oppresion, and a loss of rights because I chose to do nothing.
I wonder what others on this board think...

 

[Empty Hands]

Nope.

Although the word "feel" is the critical one. No one will ever be completely safe under any set of circumstances. The intrusive erosion of rights only provides the illusion of safety, not the actuality of it. Yet another reason to avoid that erosion in the first place.

 

[MA-Caver]

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Ben Franklin

nuff said

 

[Twin Fist]

franklin lived in a world without nukes and dirty bombs

 

[MA-Caver]

Franklin lived in a world without nukes and dirty bombs

Does that mean his world was that much safer? He had written that quote February 17, 1775 ( http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin ). If I remember my American history correctly at the time there were large numbers of guys running around in bright red coats killing and hurting fellow colonialists and trying to impose their King's will upon them.

 

[granfire]

not to mention indians and bears...

 

[Twin Fist]

well, there is no "right" to walk onto an airplane without getting patted down.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

a couple of the other threads have made me want to ask this question..
wish I could do a poll.

Supporting Member feature.

I would have the answers as...

a. Yes I am fine with giving up my rights to have less worry about criminals effecting me
b. No my rights are more important to me then allowing law enforcement another tool to use against crime
c. Yes I am fine being a sheep
d. No I will die fighting for my rights
e. I don't care, I like being ignorant and not having to worry about this one way or the other.
f. other...explain.

I would have to go with D. I would not want to die, but I would not allow my kids to live under oppresion, and a loss of rights because I chose to do nothing.
I wonder what others on this board think...

Q- Are you willing to give up your rights to feel safe?
A- No.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Very few people are in favor of giving up liberty in exchange for safety, perceived or actual.

However, very few people see themselves in that role, even when they are doing exactly that.

This means those who advocate muzzling 'hate speech' are in fact advocating giving up freedom in exchange for safety. Left-wing.

It also means those who advocate the USA Patriot Act are giving up freedom in exchange for safety. Right-wing.

There are hundreds of examples that can be cited, and on both sides of the political aisle. Both sides accuse the other of wishing to disregard the Constitution in order to achieve their political goals and in order to achieve some level of safety.

None of them think they advocate giving up literal freedoms. Just a small insignificant change to how we do things. You have to prove your citizenship now before you can vote? A minor issue. You can't burn a Koran in public? Minor inconvenience, certainly not an infringement of civil rights. And think of the benefits! Why, we'll all live in a much happier, healthier, and yes, safer country if only we will see things their way.

So to answer the question - are you willing to give up your rights to feel safe? Apparently so. Each and every one of you. Not one of you doesn't have a pet issue you don't think warrants a minor change to what we call Constitutional rights in the USA. I know you don't think it's sacrificing freedom, and I know you don't think you would give liberty away in exchange for freedom, but you would. Not only would you do it, you loudly demand it on a daily basis. Left, right, center, all of you. And me.

We love freedom - OUR freedom. Yours, we're not so fond of.

 

[Archangel M]

And we are also prone to yell and scream at our politicians/LEO's/military etc to "DO SOMETHING!!! (either before or after the accusations of NOT doing something to stop it beforehand)" after something like 9/11 happens. We demand it..then a few months/years downrange we start blaming them for the erosion of our rights. We get the governemnt we ask for.

 

[bushidomartialarts]

I have to go with (F)

Everybody, even TF and Lucky, give up basic freedom in the name of safety. Read your Locke, or your Paine. TF agrees that he'll go to jail for punching me in the snout, in exchange for the safety of not having me punch him in the snout.

Surrendering a reasonable amount of freedom for a reasonable amount of safety is part of living in a society. If you've gotten married, you've settled for even less freedom -- ditto if you have a job.

What's worse is that the government isn't even the most dangerous player in the field anymore. Look into the statistics on meaningful censorship in the US: it's all Barnes & Noble, WalMart and Scholastic -- not the state and federal lawmakers -- who ruin the freedom on information in our marketplace of ideas. Search engine algorithms are a brave new world of corporate censorship.

The real question is where you put "reasonable" on the scale from living alone in the woods to living like a character in 1984. An even more important question is what you're willing to do to protect freedom.

Going out in a blaze of glory against federal stormtroopers is nice, macho imagery, but unlikely and ineffective.
How about not shopping at WalMart? Or showing up at a school board curriculum meeting? Reading the news from sources you don't already agree with? Finding work as an independent contractor despite the loss of illusionary job security?

I do agree with TF on one point. The government is not the real enemy here. It's complacency. And the illusionary conflict between conservative and liberal that the power elite have fostered: every second TF spends harping about democrats, or that Empty Hands spends mad about -- is a second the real threat goes with their eyes on the wrong ball in the wrong game.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I have to go with (F)

Everybody, even TF and Lucky, give up basic freedom in the name of safety. Read your Locke, or your Paine. TF agrees that he'll go to jail for punching me in the snout, in exchange for the safety of not having me punch him in the snout.

Surrendering a reasonable amount of freedom for a reasonable amount of safety is part of living in a society. If you've gotten married, you've settled for even less freedom -- ditto if you have a job.

What's worse is that the government isn't even the most dangerous player in the field anymore. Look into the statistics on meaningful censorship in the US: it's all Barnes & Noble, WalMart and Scholastic -- not the state and federal lawmakers -- who ruin the freedom on information in our marketplace of ideas. Search engine algorithms are a brave new world of corporate censorship.

The real question is where you put "reasonable" on the scale from living alone in the woods to living like a character in 1984. An even more important question is what you're willing to do to protect freedom.

Going out in a blaze of glory against federal stormtroopers is nice, macho imagery, but unlikely and ineffective.
How about not shopping at WalMart? Or showing up at a school board curriculum meeting? Reading the news from sources you don't already agree with? Finding work as an independent contractor despite the loss of illusionary job security?

I do agree with TF on one point. The government is not the real enemy here. It's complacency. And the illusionary conflict between conservative and liberal that the power elite have fostered: every second TF spends harping about democrats, or that Empty Hands spends mad about -- is a second the real threat goes with their eyes on the wrong ball in the wrong game.

That was very well said.

And we do get the government we deserve - good and hard.

With regard to freedoms - domestic tranquility and such - freedom sometimes exists in the abstract, rather than the concrete. I don't want to go live in a tarpaper shack, off the grid, and without income and not pay any taxes - but I can. At least for now, no one can stop me, it's my right to do so if I please. And that's important too. When we can no longer make those choices, whether we would or would not have done do in reality, we have given up an essential liberty.

I do have to take slight issue with your statement that we give up liberty for safety. In the sense of the 'common defense' perhaps; but in the aggregate, we give up liberty for order. Safety comes with that; but it's a side-effect, not the main purpose for society. We voluntarily live in societies because we wish to order our lives and our society in a particular way. That society serves best that makes everyone equally angry at it.

 

[Touch Of Death]

It is unsafe to give up your rights to feel safe.
Sean

 

[Andy Moynihan]

Robert Heinlein said it best in "Strenger in a Strange Land" :

"There is no safety this side of the grave".

 

[bushidomartialarts]

With regard to freedoms - domestic tranquility and such - freedom sometimes exists in the abstract, rather than the concrete. I don't want to go live in a tarpaper shack, off the grid, and without income and not pay any taxes - but I can. At least for now, no one can stop me, it's my right to do so if I please. And that's important too. When we can no longer make those choices, whether we would or would not have done do in reality, we have given up an essential liberty.

This illustrates much of the meat of the issue...

Sure, you could do that. But in that tarpaper shack, off the grid, living off the land -- you'd still be subject to arrest and imprisonment if your garden included some marijuana and a few psychedelic mushrooms. Ditto if you decided to do your hunting with a full-auto assault rifle. If you decided to kill yourself in that shack, police would be legally allowed to stop you and put you in a mental ward until you changed your mind.

Out society has set a hard limit against some of the ways we might choose to live...a limit most of us have decided isn't restrictive enough to fight against...at least not physically.