Have We Given Up Essential Liberty For Temporary Safety? Yes or No?

Have We Given Up Essential Liberty For Temporary Safety?


  • Total voters
    34
  • Poll closed .

paulitician

Platinum Member
Oct 7, 2011
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"They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary safety,deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin
 
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One of the problems I feel Paul has is his over simplification of issues. Liberty and our safety are both paramount.

What does liberty do for the World Trade victims or intentional plane crash victims? Is TSA taking away our rights? they are striving for the least intrusion for passengers in assuring we have a safe homeland against thise who wish to kill us. It's not easy to balance both, but we must. This is just one example of "rights" being taken away from our citizens that many would not approve.

The Patriot Act has been designed so we are safe and still alive to enjoy our liberties. The rights of those who wish to harm us, whether American or foreign born has to to be compromised for the safety of our citizens. And now it's law...a good one.
 
One of the problems I feel Paul has is his over simplification of issues. Liberty and our safety are both paramount.

What does liberty do for the World Trade victims or intentional plane crash victims? Is TSA taking away our rights? they are striving for the least intrusion for passengers in assuring we have a safe homeland against thise who wish to kill us. It's not easy to balance both, but we must. This is just one example of "rights" being taken away from our citizens that many would not approve.

The Patriot Act has been designed so we are safe and still alive to enjoy our liberties. The rights of those who wish to harm us, whether American or foreign born has to to be compromised for the safety of our citizens. And now it's law...a good one.

We dont have a "RIGHT" to fly on privately owned airliners. We have a choice and that is our freedom. If we "CHOOSE" to fly we chose to be searched.
 
Those who repeat this quote have no idea what an essential liberty is. That's why they say it. They would give up a permanent safety for a trivial liberty.
 
Funny, the last twenty years show that when Republicans are in power, we are less safe and have less liberty.

See: Terrorist attacks.

Ask: Pregnant women, gays, blacks, Muslims......

Point to: Voter suppression.

Look at: Rapidly aging infrastructure.

What else can you say?
 
"They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary safety,deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin

Yes, and this was done by the Bush Regime w/Herr Rumsfeld and Herr Vader, I mean Herr Cheney. All with the cheering of folks on the Right like yourself, and all the Republicans. If the Bush Regime was a Star Wars episode/movie it would be titled 'Rise of The Neo-Cons'

The idea of "safety" as was made popular during the Neo-Con phase of Government is a myth. It's a political dog-whistle to gather the troops of support. There's no such thing as "safety," anything can happen to any of us at any time. The party that proports to be Christians should know better. It's really sickening!
 
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If the poll refers to the Patriot Act that is anathema to Ron Paul supporters, then I would answer the poll 'no', I don't think we have given up essential liberties at all in order to provide the government the tools it needs to perform its constitutionally mandated function to provide the common defense.

If the poll refers to financially crushing and destablilizing federal entitlements, the ever more intrusive regulations dictating what products we may or may not buy, and the unconscionable assault on personal liberties in ObamaCare, then I would answer the poll "yes", we are absolutely handing over our freedoms, piece by piece, to an ever more authoritarian government.
 
If the poll refers to the Patriot Act that is anathema to Ron Paul supporters, then I would answer the poll 'no', I don't think we have given up essential liberties at all in order to provide the government the tools it needs to perform its constitutionally mandated function to provide the common defense.

If the poll refers to financially crushing and destablilizing federal entitlements, the ever more intrusive regulations dictating what products we may or may not buy, and the unconscionable assault on personal liberties in ObamaCare, then I would answer the poll "yes", we are absolutely handing over our freedoms, piece by piece, to an ever more authoritarian government.

Very well stated. "Bumping" so others can see this.
 
I guess Paul isnt going to answer me.

Anyone can rattle of supposed collective freedoms weve lost but no one ever seems to be able to site personal freedoms lost.
 
Of course we have. That's what we've been telling people all along starting with the patriot act. But then finally when the TSA comes around... THEN they bitch? They reap what they sow.

It's amazing. People allow the government to listen in on their most intimate conversations, but it's when they get their penis and breasts touched in an entirely non sexual way that they get all offended by the rights they've given the government.
 
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Are we really free? Think about it a bit before typing.

Again you will need to specify what you mean by being 'free'. If you mean that we are free to do whatever we want no matter what effect or impact that has on others, then no, we are not and were never intended to be. In order to secure our rights, we must agree via social contract that our rights end where another's rights begin.

If you mean we are free of government interference, unnecessary intrustiveness and authoritarianism, of course we aren't. We started losing that kind of freedom since the Teddy Roosevelt administration and if we don't turn it around, we will soon be back under a totally authoritarian government.
 
We have given up the ideal of a truly representative government and traded it away for nothing. Most of us just gave up and let the lobbyists have it, the rest are just liberal trouble makers and do not count.
 
I guess Paul isnt going to answer me.

Anyone can rattle of supposed collective freedoms weve lost but no one ever seems to be able to site personal freedoms lost.

That's a disingenuous question. The loss of liberty occurs when the government CAN make an arbitrary victim of ANYONE, not when it actually DOES make an arbitrary victim of ME.

I, personally have not been spied upon without a warrant by federal agents (that I know of). I have certainly not been locked up without benefit of counsel, without charges, without due process, and without any recourse as an "enemy combatant." But if I must fear that the government MAY do these things to me any time it chooses, then I have lost liberty, even if, so far, it has NOT chosen to do them.

Remember:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

- Pastor Martin Niemöller
 
The Founders gave us a Constitution that was a great experiment. The first government of its kind in all of world history, then and now. It was a concept that if everybody's rights are not equally recognized and protected, then there is no freedom. And so, the government was charged with protecting and defending our unalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Such laws and regulation NECESSARY to do that would be in the the interest of promoting that general welfare.

And then we were to govern ourselves and live our lives as we saw fit and organize ourselves into whatever sort of society we wished to have free of any despot, dictator, monarch, or other authoritarian government.

For the past approximately 100 years, however, the leftists among us have forgotten or never learned to appreciate that original concept. And they have inch by inch, law by law, regulation by regulation, and court decision after court decision been stripping away our ability to govern ourselves and replacing those freedoms with authoritarian government.

Again, if we don't turn it around soon, the America the Founders gave us will be no more and all that will be left of it is a giant European socialist entity or banana republic with none of the creativity, vigor, or inspiration of the Founders left.
 
It isn't "leftists" that have done this, and most certainly what it under discussion in this thread is not a "left-wing" initiative.
 
It isn't "leftists" that have done this, and most certainly what it under discussion in this thread is not a "left-wing" initiative.

Any time you have the federal government doing what the Founders never intended for it to do, it is a 'leftist' initiative regardless of who originated it.

Statists/leftism/progressivism/modern American liberalism = bigger, more inclusive, more authoritarian government.

Classical liberalism/libertarianism/modern American conservatism = no more government than is necessary to perform its assigned constitutional responsibilities and more individual liberty and responsibility.
 

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