[runjake]

Every time the TSA rambles on about how giving up this little bit of freedom saves your life from terrorism, I wonder why a journalist doesn't hit them up for comment on the (perhaps apocryphal) quote "Those who would give up their liberty for security deserve neither".

[PotatoEngineer]

I've always found that Franklin quote to be a little misleading. The mere act of being a member of a tribe, much less a nation, involves giving up some liberty for security: you're no longer allowed to punch your neighbors in the face for no reason, but now you have some extra spears on your side when some fellow from the next tribe over tries to steal your horse. (Or rather, if you punch a neighbor, you have to deal with whatever consequences the tribe tries to apply to you.)

Join a tribe: can't stab your neighbors anymore. Join a nation: not allowed to bomb buildings 500 miles from your home anymore. I'm all in favor of finding the right balance between liberty and security (usually more towards the liberty side), but the idea that you can get security without giving up liberty just doesn't work.

[evgen]

Perhaps you should learn the quote first: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Now you just need to prove that the liberties being abrogated are essential and that the security being provided is temporary.

[tptacek]

And since the liberty (privacy) that's being abrogated here isn't even mentioned in the Constitution --- and reasonable, experienced Constitutional Law scholars can argue that we aren't guaranteed it --- that's a tough row to hoe.

[_ouxp]

If it "isn't even mentioned in the Constitution," (and it's not), then it's protected. The U.S. Constitution enumerates the powers of the U.S. Government. A right does not have to be mentioned in the constitution to be a constitutionally protected right by virtue of a lack of authorization for the government to take it away.

[tptacek]

From everything I've read about the "Right To Privacy", starting with Alderman and Kennedy's book in '96 (which got me to start paying attention to what SCOTUS and SCOTUS nominees were saying about privacy as an actual right implied by the 4th amendment), it is very much up for grabs as to whether we have a Constitutionally inviolable right to privacy.

I hope we do! But an argument backstopped on the notion that we do doesn't seem very strong.

[kragen]

There are those — including some of the authors of the constitution you're talking about — who believe that rights do not come from written constitutions or governments, but rather that it is to defend the rights that we naturally possess that governments are erected by the peoples of the earth, with written constitutions or without them.

Perhaps this is a naïve view of governments and of rights. But it is this view upon which everything you are discussing is contingent. The alternative would seem to be that might makes right.

[evgen]

Rights are not absolute out in the real world. There are always tradeoffs, especially when various rights come into conflict with one another. The second amendment clearly states that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Does that mean that it is unconstitutional for me to be prevented from bringing an Uzi onto an airplane? The various political and judicial processes that have been established are how we balance these various rights to achieve some condition that most of us are satisfied with. Rights may not come from written constitutions or governments, but those creations are what we use to negotiate amongst ourselves when various rights appear to be in conflict.

[runjake]

I hoped you've satiated your pedantry for today, but the quote exists in several re-quoted forms. Jefferson "mis-quoted" Franklin. Everyone mis-quotes Jefferson.

[evgen]

> I hoped you've satiated your pedantry for today

Not quite :)

While many attribute the mis-quote to Jefferson, there is no written record of him making such a statement. In fact, there is actually no direct record of this coming from Franklin either. The earliest references were in an anonymously published book that referenced a letter from the Pennsylvania Assembly to their Governor from 1755 (when later re-published in Philedelphia it was Franklin who printed it...) At that time Franklin was a member of the Assembly and the quote does sound like his sort of wit, but the full quote seems useful and nuanced enough that we should remember it even if it happened to come from some other member of the Assembly that no one happened to remember.