Passed that promised safety...but were intended to stop all kinds of revolts, like the Revolution and the Scottish uprising

the king's laws were a case of too little, too late! (Not that I support the Crown!) Whatever the laws were, they seem to have brought on exactly the revolution they were meant to prevent!

That someday Americans would embrace the kinds of laws they fought against. Franklin was a prophet.

It is what we fear most, and what will more completely motivate us to surrender freedom.

I posted this in GD.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023032493

In each case, he was referring to doing anything to protect America, otherwise, a coup'd'etat and we can lose it all.

He meant Loose lips sink ships and meant, drones would be a good thing is they stop the overthrow of the government or
by extremists in the NRA

You would give up freedom for the illusion of safety? Because that's what you seem to advocate here.

he meant freedom means wailing at the moon, free of everything important lost in the name of freedom

one can't yell fire in a theatre

if there really is a fire, even if there isn't, you can still yell it, just be prepared to suffer the consequences.

Sorry, I don't share your vision of America's freedoms and safety and I'll oppose you at every turn.
And quite truthfully, I don't much give a fuck what Kristofferson said.

Squarely on the head.

in other peoples countries.
who cares about laws when you can kill suspected terrorists, when any adult within range of the drone strike is a suspected terrorist, and double-tapping the people that rush to the injured is the norm.

the song Me and Bobby McGee. That explains a lot.

and place border posts in states to check for guns and ammo.

http://www.ushistory.org/Franklin/quotable/quote04.htm

In 1755 (Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, Tue, Nov 11, 1755), Franklin wrote: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

This phrasing was also the motto in Historical Review of Pennsylvania, attributed to Franklin

It's important to note that this sentiment, with many variations, was much used in the Revolutionary period by Franklin and others.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

This was written by Franklin, within quotation marks but is generally accepted as his original thought, sometime shortly before February 17, 1775 as part of his notes for a proposition at the Pennsylvania Assembly, as published in Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin (1818).

... even the French & Indian war, let alone the Revolution.

And since it's a title page there wasn't a specific context to it.

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

stopping attempts to stop terrorists would mean 100% lose of our liberty.

because of his other statement, I believe Franklin would have done EVERYTHING and anything to prevent another 9-11 from taking away 3000 or more American's lives and all rights.

IMHO

has done more to take away our liberties than any terrorist.

The Roman Senate willingly gave up their rights as free citizens of Rome after a "terror" attack, those changes gave rise to the Caesars.

And your belief that Franklin would have given up everything for "safety" is total BS.

but you seem to think that we need to give up some of our freedoms to attain more security.
Sorry, but that's pure RW bullshit.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/09/21-platform-security-wittes

a Person of Some Merit upthread said "he was referring to the king's laws".

And who is the Brookings dude anyway? Some administration toady?

Words can change meaning based on context; I think that's the case here.

in 1755. Rather than being about the danger of oppressive/repressive (however the user defines those terms) laws aimed at individual civil rights, Franklin was concerned about the collective right of the people to self-govern (and protect themselves), versus the behind-the-scenes power of the wealthy. Perhaps a more modern translation would be "beware the 1%!". Or in other words, it was less about the king's laws and more about the king's friends.

That said, I don't think it's necessarily wrong to re-use or reapply a well-turned phrase or pithy quote. What would be an error would be to conclude that Franklin himself would support the modern application of the words; that on the basis of the quote he'd be saying "Fuck the NSA!" or "Down with gun control!" or "Hells yeah, I'll text while driving!" or whatever other 'essential liberty' is on the chopping block.

Maybe a better way of using that phrase currently would be to preface it: "As Benjamin Franklin once said in a completely different context, those who would..."

Just sayin. I'm not sure how trustworthy such a subversive character is, and boy howdy a womanizer too!

THom Hartmann said that the Brits had the right to search any house or papers at any time with no probable cause which the Founders/Americans hated. Its what led to including the 4th Amendment.

What Ben Franklin Really Said

(snip)

The words appear originally in a 1755 letter that Franklin is presumed to have written on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the colonial governor during the French and Indian War. The letter was a salvo in a power struggle between the governor and the Assembly over funding for security on the frontier, one in which the Assembly wished to tax the lands of the Penn family, which ruled Pennsylvania from afar, to raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the Assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him. So to start matters, Franklin was writing not as a subject being asked to cede his liberty to government, but in his capacity as a legislator being asked to renounce his power to tax lands notionally under his jurisdiction. In other words, the “essential liberty” to which Franklin referred was thus not what we would think of today as civil liberties but, rather, the right of self-governance of a legislature in the interests of collective security.

What’s more the “purchase [of] a little temporary safety” of which Franklin complains was not the ceding of power to a government Leviathan in exchange for some promise of protection from external threat; for in Franklin’s letter, the word “purchase” does not appear to have been a metaphor. The governor was accusing the Assembly of stalling on appropriating money for frontier defense by insisting on including the Penn lands in its taxes–and thus triggering his intervention. And the Penn family later offered cash to fund defense of the frontier–as long as the Assembly would acknowledge that it lacked the power to tax the family’s lands. Franklin was thus complaining of the choice facing the legislature between being able to make funds available for frontier defense and maintaining its right of self-governance–and he was criticizing the governor for suggesting it should be willing to give up the latter to ensure the former.

In short, Franklin was not describing some tension between government power and individual liberty. He was describing, rather, effective self-government in the service of security as the very liberty it would be contemptible to trade. Notwithstanding the way the quotation has come down to us, Franklin saw the liberty and security interests of Pennsylvanians as aligned.

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/07/what-ben-franklin-really-said/