Liberty Over Safety

[Vitruvius]

Until now, every generation of Americans have traded safety for liberty; from the Lexington Green to the Normandy beaches, from the Sons of Liberty to the Freedom Riders, it has been part of the American narrative that risks are taken to expand freedom, not freedoms sacrificed to avoid risk. <SNIP>

Now the Bush administration is telling Americans that they now must swap their liberties for a bit more safety. The historical shift can be seen by comparing Patrick Henry's revolutionary vow of "give me liberty or give me death" to Sen. Pat Roberts's self-centered observation that "you have no civil liberties if you're dead." <SNIP>

MORE at http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/051806.html

[ShortnFiery]

1. "you have no civil liberties if you're dead."

What a horse's patootie! :puke:

Guess what, we're going to have to put up with all these squealers and their attack dogs for decades IF we don't light a fire under our Democratic Senator's a**es and spark a filibuster.

Yet, I fear, save for a few brave Democratic Representatives, we have no Loyal Opposition Party. This will equate to decades of Republican / Totalitarian rule. Kiss OUR Bill of Rights good-bye if Hayden is confirmed. :(

[meow2u3]

3. STP to Pat Roberts: I have no intention of giving up

my civil liberties while I'm still alive.

One more point, Mr. Roberts: You are what's wrong with Kansas.

[Demeter]

4. If You Have NO Liberty, You Might As Well Be Dead

Must we restate the obvious for these fools?

[Inland]

2. Two points on all the "liberty vs safety" debates that could EVER happen.

1) The concept that we should choose to balance liberty vs safety carries a presumption of public debate and lawmaking that embodies the concept. People can disagree, but we need a common standard, so it's decided in the legislature.. You can see that balance in the passing of, say, FISA.

Bush, secretly, ignores the laws and institutes new balances of liberty vs. safety. Does anyone know how much of our liberty and privacey Bush has secrety taken? No, he has just stopped obeying the laws that come out of our debates. The line between liberty and security has been, without our knowledge, redrawn so that we have sacrified liberty AND control over our own government AND our rule of law for security.....all without debate.

2) So where's all this security we were supposed to get for losing liberty anyway? I guess since we don't get to debate the balance, or rather, our debate and the laws passed won't matter to Bush anyway, we never get a chance to know whether we are really getting a tradeoff or whether other, less intrusive methods don't work as well.