One of my favourite quotations is: 鈥淗e who gives up liberty for safety deserves neither and will lose both.鈥�
That is actually how I remember it, but whenever I decide to use a quotation, I check it for both accuracy and attribution.
This one is generally attributed to Benjamin Franklin and has been used, as long as I can remember, in the debate over finding a balance between individual freedom and public safety.
It was particularly useful when the United States passed the Patriot Act after 9/11. And it is particularly useful right now in Canada as the Conservatives continue their attempt to erode our freedoms with ever increasing powers for security organizations and unconstitutional changes to the criminal code.
Of course, whenever I do these kinds of searches, I go a few pages deep into Google results because they rank the most relevant links by popularity rather than accuracy.
I was disappointed, at least initially, to find that not only might my recollection of the quotation be inaccurate, but it also might be totally out of context with its original intent.
I found this really interesting article on a website called TechCrunch.com entitled 鈥淗ow the world butchered Benjamin Franklin鈥檚 quote on liberty vs. security.鈥�
This is another good reason for digging deep into Google search results. I have written before about how Internet technology tends to shepherd us all into echo chambers where we only hear things that confirm our pre-existing biases. I don鈥檛 want to be one of those people who misses out on important information.
So, after weeding through a little bit of liberal-bashing, it led me to Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC.
It seems the original quotation is actually: 鈥淭hose who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.鈥�
Wittes, by virtue of access to primary sources writes that contrary to the way we tend to use it today as liberty and security being in conflict, Franklin saw the two as being in harmony in the context of the French and Indian War.
Franklin was intervening in a dispute between the Pennsylvania Assembly and the colonial governor. The assembly wanted to tax lands of the Penn family to raise money for defence against French and Indian attacks on the frontier.聽 The colonial governor, who had been appointed by the Penns, kept vetoing the legislation.
鈥淭he governor was accusing the Assembly of stalling on appropriating money for frontier defense [sic] by insisting on including the Penn lands in its taxes and thus triggering his intervention,鈥� Wittes wrote.
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鈥檚 lands.
鈥淔ranklin 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鈥揳nd he was criticizing the governor for suggesting it should be willing to give up the latter to ensure the former.
鈥淚n 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.鈥�
I said I was initially disappointed, but I think the phrase still stands in the modern context. We should probably find some other way of attributing it, but it is too good as a piece of rhetoric (rhetoric is not always bad) to lose.
There is even a version of it on the Statue of Liberty: 鈥淭hey that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.鈥�
There is nothing saying you cannot appropriate good ideas for different purposes.
