[dhbradshaw]

I really like this passage:

>It is always the case that there are benefits available from relinquishing core civil liberties: allowing infringements on free speech may reduce false claims and hateful ideas; allowing searches and seizures without warrants will likely help the police catch more criminals, and do so more quickly; giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security.

> But the core premise of the West generally, and the U.S. in particular, is that those trade-offs are never worthwhile. Americans still all learn and are taught to admire the iconic (if not apocryphal) 1775 words of Patrick Henry, which came to define the core ethos of the Revolutionary War and American Founding: “Give me liberty or give me death.” It is hard to express in more definitive terms on which side of that liberty-versus-security trade-off the U.S. was intended to fall.

[roywiggins]

I think the security/liberty tradeoff is actually often a false promise. You can end up trading away liberty for nothing at all. I don't like buying into this, even to say "liberty is better, we should do that instead" because it implicitly concedes that you would really get the security on the other side of the bargain.

And if you don't get the security you were promised, it's too late to do anything about it.

[zugi]

> "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" -- Benjamin Franklin

The key phrase is "a little temporary safety". 250 years ago people understood that the "security" gains were small and fleeting, but the loss of liberty was massive and permanent.

[js2]

FWIW, the context of the Franklin quote is him defending the ability of the legislature to tax a family that was trying to bribe/lobby the governor to do otherwise.

The quote is in defense of the government: WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

[conartist6]

That context didn't change the meaning at all for me.

Probably because Franklin most certainly thought himself to be writing on behalf of the people and was making a direct appeal that they assert their right to govern themselves rather than letting powerful private interests do as they wished.

That's not equally relevant everywhere the quote gets used, but it seems pretty relevant here, no?

[bluedel]

I feel like that would only change your opinion of the quote if you originally equated it to "Government bad!", which is a thoughtless thought.

[b00ty4breakfast]

the phrase fits the modern usage, even if it's been decontextualized. kinda like "who watches the watchmen?" originally being about cheating wives bribing the folks keeping her locked up in the house.

[BobbyTables2]

Too bad Franklin didn’t just quote Spock:

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…”

(/s)

Thanks for educating us!

[Der_Einzige]

This dynamic always happens with quotes and attempts to deploy the founding fathers in arguments. Most of the founding fathers (except Thomas Paine) were terrible, horrible, no good people. I’d have been a loyalist in that era.

[nathan_compton]

Maybe I'm just America Pilled but I'll support almost anyone against a hereditary monarchy. The idea should be fundamentally disgusting to any self-respecting human being.

[mapt]

There's no government as effective at instituting necessary changes as a benevolent autocracy, nor any so effective at destruction as a malevolent one.

If our democracy is sufficiently broken, if supermajority voter policy preferences continue to be dismissed by both parties, it might be that we just cannot survive under the old Constitutional order. The Right's open move towards a post-democratic future, and the proceduralist Center's continued failure to fully utilize their popular mandate to fix things that need fixing, implicitly authorizes a Left to develop that is more obsessed with expression of the popular will and with good governance, than it is with a 250 year old bureaucratic structure and "norms". Norms of restraint are a consensual exercise, and cannot persist unilaterally.

The way things are going, the trajectory, make even most 20th century hereditary monarchies look pretty decent. Especially ones that devolve most power to parliamentary bodies.

[Terr_]

Aside, the original meaning of Franklin's words are less-inspiring but perhaps more-interesting.

He's saying the local democratic legislature must not give up its "freedom" to pass laws taxing the powerful Penn dynasty which almost owns Pennsylvania.

He wants to reject a deal offered by the Penns: A big lump of money for temporary military security now, in exchange for an agreement that they can never be taxed ever again.

[mathgradthrow]

That's not an aside. The quote is pernicious because of its attribution to Ben. People invoke it without ever asking themselves if its true because they think of it as the hard won wisdom of a great man.

[bigbadfeline]

> The quote is pernicious because of its attribution to Ben.

It's not pernicious for any reason because it's absolutely true in general, Franklin was simply using a general piece of wisdom to justify particular government actions.

Yes, using it that way was an improvisation and a bit of a stretch, but the real issue here is why he needed to resort to it - that's a rabbit hole that pretty much goes to the bottom of today's problems which we're handling in a much worse manner than him back then.

[mathgradthrow]

What do you consider "absolutely true" or "in general" to mean?

[superb_dev]

I don’t find that to be less inspiring

[roywiggins]

Well, quite. And in an American Revolution context it's not like the colonies were notably less secure places to live after they gained independence.

[weaksauce]

basically the patriot act was a big piece of temporary safety that never produced any.

[nkrisc]

When you've given up all liberty, there's nothing left to stop the security being used against you.

[gcanyon]

If you assume that the security side of the equation is a false promise, then you are not making a decision at all: choosing between liberty with no security, or no liberty plus no security (because it's fake).

And for me, it seems somewhat disingenuous to imply that a decision is being made when your premise belies that.

[roywiggins]

It's not that security is fake, it's that giving up liberty doesn't naturally produce more security, and pursuing greater liberty doesn't necessarily erode security either.

It's not like pre-Revolutionary America was a notably secure place that inevitably see-sawed into a freer but insecure place afterwards.

[gcanyon]

As I said to the other respondent, I think it's important to justify the idea that both security and liberty can be achieved simultaneously.

[roywiggins]

Equally, the idea that there is a tradeoff in some particular situation is frequently asserted without evidence. The quote from the article is "It is always the case that there are benefits available from relinquishing core civil liberties."

That is 1) presented without evidence and 2) almost certainly false. It is not always the case.

[foxyv]

It's a false dichotomy. There are 4 options:

1. Don't give up liberty, give up security.

2. Give up liberty, give up security.

3. Give up liberty, don't give up security.

4. Don't give up liberty, don't give up security.

Number 4 is completely possible. It's just that people in power don't like it because it means they have less power. They want to pretend that only options 1 and 3 are available and ignore that they are actually offering option 2.

[gcanyon]

Your argument is with GP who proposed that the security might be false.

But I will say I don't think you should say "options," but rather "possibilities." "Options" implies that all four are actually available. I don't think you get to assume that 4 is possible without offering evidence.

[foxyv]

It depends on context for sure. Without a specific case study you can't really say.

However, in general, they are not exclusive. This has been demonstrated fairly often. In fact, it is often the case that maximizing liberty leads to more security.

https://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/europeanamericanrelationsh...

https://www.securityanddemocracy.org/post/beyond-the-false-c...

[majormajor]

We concurrently see failures on both the "attempts to preserve liberty" and "attempts to preserve security" front, so let's stop arguing about abstract principles.

Quotes are pointless, discussion should be limited to what's happening on the ground. For any given thing that happens, do we think that it, specifically, is helpful or harmful.

It's trivial to reverse that quote: we can, and have, pushed to keep the US population armed with increasingly-advanced personal weapons (in the name of liberty) without actually gaining any protection against authoritarian styles of government use of force or surveillance as a result. While just making civilian-on-civilian violence easier and more lethal.

[themafia]

> discussion should be limited to what's happening on the ground

Does anyone actually have any idea what's actually happening "on the ground?"

> without actually gaining any protection against authoritarian styles of government use of force

There are three weapons for every man, woman, and child in the USA. You may enjoy more of this protection than you realize.

> While just making civilian-on-civilian violence easier and more lethal.

80% of murders happen after an argument. More suicides happen by firearm than murders by a factor of 2:1. States with lower population densities like Alaska have 6x the suicide rate of states with higher densities like New York. There's a reason people aren't given these statistics.

[rob74]

> More suicides happen by firearm than murders by a factor of 2:1

According to https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-..., this is true (if you squint) for 2023 (actually in 2023 murders were 38% of gun deaths, suicides and "others" add up to 62%, so 1.6 to 1), but the ratio varies widely for other years. According to the graph https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-..., murders and suicides were much closer together in 2021 - after that, the number of murders has dropped, while the number of suicides kept increasing.

[master-lincoln]

> There's a reason people aren't given these statistics.

What do you mean by that? You just gave people those statistics and they are widely available if people would want to look them up afaik.

Who should give other people statistics?

[watwut]

> You may enjoy more of this protection than you realize.

Americans are not safer then people in other comparable countries. They get shot more often.

In particular, they are much more likely to be shot by cops. And one of the hardest thing a layer can do is to prosecute a cop for it - they are simply untouchable unless stars align just right.

[StopDisinfo910]

I would like it a lot better without the mention to the "West", which, as usual, is a code word for: "I want to pretend my point extend outside the USA but I have absolutely no knowledge of how true that is. I don't intend to do any research because that would demand efforts from me so bear with my casual imperialism". Queue the purely American historical lesson following.

[wredcoll]

If we're nitpicking, is it queue or cue?

[StopDisinfo910]

I guess it's cue like on cue but it's late on a Sunday. You will have to excuse my brain.

It wasn't a nitpick by the way. I deeply resent American using "the West" like if my own country and culture was somehow fungible in their experience. They are not. We don't have that much in common. That doesn't include a legal tradition, or a conception of what freedom of speech should be, neither does it include values or history.

Edit: Enjoy downvoting me. It doesn't make what I said any less true. If you think the various European countries can be grouped with the US in a coherent whole, you are deeply deluding yourselves. They can't even be lumped together.

[wredcoll]

It would probably help if you made a more specific point rather than just ranting in very vague terms.

Grouping terms like "the west" can be broad enough to include over half of all living humans or so narrow that it applies to a small village.

It is, admittedly, not a particularly useful term, but it's not like americans are reaponsible for it.

[StopDisinfo910]

Where have you seen it used outside of Americans pretending their culture is somehow a standard and NATO apologists? The world doesn't even exist as such in my own language. It's a staple on Hacker News and nearly always for the bad reasons. I'm supposed to politely nod and shut up when people are casually erasing my culture?

[wredcoll]

What even is a "nato apologist"???

> Where have you seen it used outside of Americans

Well, there was this minor thing called "the western roman empire" for a few years, so that might be a starting point.

I am fascinated to learn how a claim that westerners "prefer liberty over security" is somehow erasing your culture though.

[marcus_holmes]

I (British/Australian) use it, but not in a cultural sense. I use "the West" when talking about military or economic matters.

I generally prefer the term "Anglosphere" to refer to only the bits of "the West" that share that cultural viewpoint when I'm discussing cultural matters. It's not perfect, but it's useful.

Given the widening gap between the USA and Europe (and Canada) in economic and military matters, I'm not sure how much longer "the West" is going to be useful.

[kortilla]

What are you talking about? Nobody is erasing your culture except for maybe you because you aren’t even talking about your culture. You’re just ranting about Americans.

[1718627440]

Greek philosophy did not happen in the USA and actually predates it quite a bit.

[mmooss]

Universal human rights is a very widespread belief and concept, extending to all continents and many, many cultures. It's not hard to understand why.

[wredcoll]

If you'd said "isn't just a western thing" I would have definitely agreed, but this claim seems a bit unlikely.

[mmooss]

Just look around the world; they are the norm: East Asia (Japan, South Korea, China - Taiwan, Hong Kong, June 4 on the mainland); North America; South America, almost all of the region; Europe; Australia, NZ, Indonesia, the Phillipines; South Asia (India, and I think they are enshrined if not enforced in Pakistan and some others).

What's mostly missing is the Middle East, Central Asia, parts of SE Asia, and large parts of Africa - though there are Benin, Botswana, Kenya, and many others iirc.

[logicchains]

No it's not. There are no human rights for the lowest castes in Hinduism, there are no human rights for polytheists in Islam, there were nothing like the modern idea of human rights in Japan or China before they westernized. That's why the west was able to leapfrog other nations economically (and hence militarily), because it was the first place where people had enough rights for something resembling a modern economy to develop.

[mmooss]

> That's why the west was able to leapfrog other nations economically

I tend to agree, though it's of course hard to prove. However, I'm talking about the present, not the past.

> There are no human rights for the lowest castes in Hinduism

I said it is "very widespread", not everywhere. Perhaps the confusion is the word Universal: that doesn't mean everyone believes it (false for any belief), but that everyone has the rights, whether or not they know or can exercise them. It's the concept that starts the Declaration of Independence: All are created equal, and all have inalienable rights.

> there were nothing like the modern idea of human rights in Japan or China before they westernized

I am talking about the present, where it's adopted in East Asia (including in China - Taiwan, Hong Kong (though suppressed now), June 4 on the mainland), throughout Latin America, Europe of course, parts of Africa, the Anglo world, etc.

> there are no human rights for polytheists in Islam,

There is no country called 'Islam'; if we go by scripture, nobody has human rights. The idea that all practicioners of Islam have the same beliefs is as true as saying all practicioners of Christianity do - and look at HN.

In Indonesia, the largest majority Muslim country, there are human rights, also in India, with the largest Muslim population (but not the majority). I think Pakistan and some South Asian countries probably have them enshrined.

[yencabulator]

And there were no human rights for the slaves of the Western nations.

[synecdoche]

As opposed to slaves in non-western nations? May I remind that slavery was not exclusively a western thing, and that there are more slaves today than there ever was, in absolute terms, almost none in western nations.

[yencabulator]

The parent comment was making it seem like the West is some kind of beacon of virtue.

[whattheheckheck]

If you don't give someone a reason to live they ain't gonna slave away very hard for you

[wredcoll]

I mean, nobody knows why "the west" (whatever that is) leapfrogged anyone, and this is a fairly small period in terms of total human history.

[kortilla]

The industrial revolution is quite well documented

[wredcoll]

Things people did, sure, but not why they did them here and not there is a bit trickier. There's a variety of theories, easy access to coal is my favorite, but some people like to blame the magna carta or something.

[3form]

And any leapfrogging done there hardly has anything to do with human rights I guess, so I'd say the poster above has a really bold claim here

[zelphirkalt]

So not just to the west?

[pjc50]

Yes, but: crucially, not in the USA. The EU human rights framework includes non-citizens, because they are still humans. The US constitutional rights framework does not include non-citizens, which is why ICE have free rein to abuse them.

[crazygringo]

> “Give me liberty or give me death.” It is hard to express in more definitive terms on which side of that liberty-versus-security trade-off the U.S. was intended to fall.

No, that's a gross misrepresentation of what he said and meant. Patrick Henry was referring exclusively to political liberty from British colonial rule. There is no sense whatsoever in which he was referring to civil liberties against domestic rule. It didn't have a single thing to do with "security".

> But the core premise of the West generally, and the U.S. in particular, is that those trade-offs are never worthwhile.

Also totally false. This is the core premise of libertarians in the West, who are, and always have been, a minority. It is not, and has never been, the "core premise" of the West or the US. Or else, quite obviously, we wouldn't have the constant tension between these liberties and the need for security. The idea that "those trade-offs are never worthwhile" is not a core American idea. We make those tradeoffs every single day. And continue to argue about them, e.g. over what degree of gun control is proper after each school shooting that happens.

[firen777]

>giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security

When the check and balance got tipped over, all this promised "security" will only surface when it benefits the regime.

I'm still amused by a certain ccp propaganda video my parents consumed that boast about how quickly the cctv networks helped catch a thief who stole a foreign tourist's phone, yet those cameras would also conveniently stop working at a specific day whenever a highschooler went missing in the campus.

All the prerequisite for a similar dystopia is already in place in the US and there is may be one more chance to fix it, although I wouldn't hold my breathe.

[godelski]

For those unfamiliar it's worth learning about Blackstone's Ratio. Blackstone was extremely influential to the writers of the US constitution.

I think it should come natural to engineers because I see it as similar to failure engineering, but for the legal system. When you engineer a bridge, building, or even a program you build failure modes into them. Not to cause them to fail but to control fails. A simple version is "fail open" vs "fail closed". A bank safe that fails, fails closed. It is locked and you need to drill it open. Same with an encrypted harddrive but no drill... But a locked door in a public building will typically want to fail opened, least you trap people inside during a fire. A more complex example is the root of a conspiracy. When a tall building collapses you tend to want it to fall in on itself so it doesn't take out neighboring skyscrapers...

So Blackstone's Ratio (and Franklin's recounting) is similar. It asks "which mode of failure is better? That innocent man are condemned or that guilty men go free?" This is a question we must all ask ourselves least we back ourselves into a corner. There's no perfect solution. We don't want failure, we should reduce it as much as possible, but if/when it fails, which outcome do you prefer?

I'll link the wiki but the topic is so famous you'll find a million and I'm pretty sure it's taught in every law school in America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

[mathgeek]

> It is hard to express in more definitive terms on which side of that liberty-versus-security trade-off the U.S. was intended to fall.

While I agree with Henry, and intend for _my_ life and social impact to fall there, "where the U.S. was intended to fall" is a misnomer here. That quote was one man's opinion. The U.S. is millions of living beings who, if they have liberty, should get to do whatever they want with it (which in itself is an oxymoron).

[yauneyz]

I think part of the problem is a temptation to believe that we can have out cake and eat it too.

If the people on charge of deciding when to use the cameras were morally perfect, we have all the upside and none of the downside.

The problem is we live in a fallen world and that will simply never work.

Nevertheless it is a siren song that causes us to repeatedly make the wrong trade

[whycombigator]

"we live in a fallen world"

derp

[ryanmcbride]

we could have liberty and privacy and security if the people in charge wanted us to. But they don't and they've convinced enough people that they don't either.

[smeej]

It's not liberty if you can only have it if the people in charge want you to.

[ryanmcbride]

I agree

[seanmcdirmid]

If the police actually did their job, took property crimes seriously and would bother with the suspicious guy high on fent looking into kids bedroom reports seriously, then we really wouldn't have to be setting up our own surveillance to make up for lacking local government services. But here we are, I'm not sure why libertarians think we don't have a right to defend ourselves (using new tech to make up for a lack of policing) when the city won't?

I frankly see it as a liberty to be able to use this tech, and it would be tyranny to prevent us from using it.

[FireBeyond]

> and would bother with the suspicious guy high on fent looking into kids bedroom reports seriously

Wuh? I was a paramedic who probably has responded to nearly 1,000 fentanyl abuse patients.

I've never seen one who is all busy-beavering looking for homes to surreptitiously spy in kids bedrooms.

Symptoms of fentanyl use include: extreme drowsiness, poor responsiveness, nodding off, profound confusion and inability to focus on even simple acts, delayed reactions, poor body control.

The idea of a bunch of fent users sneaking around neighborhoods trying to be pedophiliac perverts seems far more right-wing fearmongering than anything based in reality.

[seanmcdirmid]

I live in a dense neighborhood, and my kid's bedroom is on the bottom floor. So when they are scalking around looking for something to steal sot hey can buy more drugs, it happens anyways. I'm sure that stealing things is their actual focus, its just an accident of house construction that they wind up at my kid's bedroom window.

> The idea of a bunch of fent users sneaking around neighborhoods trying to be pedophiliac perverts seems far more right-wing fearmongering than anything based in reality.

This is why I hate the far right and the far left. The far left is like "we should just let the fent users steal all of our stuff because they are humans to! Let them poop freely on the sidewalks!", the far right are like "Those are all illegal immigrants lets deport them to El Salvadore". As a moderate, I hate both sides. It is just too bad that Trump is in power right now so the far left gets a huge electoral boost in local elections.

[roysting]

Unfortunately for us all, the assault on liberty even done of the “normies” have started noticing recent, is only the latter stages of this assault on on America that has been going on for arguably 180 years ago.

Many in American history have noted that America is a kind of natural fortress protected by ocean moats. What that assumption just did not take into account is how America’s enemies would take action against America with that assumption taken as granted. It has come in the form of endless amounts of infiltration, subversion, corruption, and pollution… as any half-witted strategist and saboteur would have done. America was simply not sophisticated enough to realize that massive threat, because the leaders relied on that assumption that the USA is an impenetrable fort; never considering what happens if your fort is infiltrated through the many different means you open yourself up to being infiltrated.

America, a genuine America or whatever one can scrape together to consider as such, not just one that emulates and imitates like some kind of container cult, is really not long for this world. Another 20 years and Americas simile stops existing in anything but name only, if that, since there’s not even any reason or incentive anymore to keep the name out the branding at that point.

What do we call this place post America? Maybe we just come right out and just call it Oceania.

[pjc50]

The problem is there are two Americas, and always have been. At one point they were clearly separated and had a civil war, but really they exist in overlapping spaces all the time. One is the America of the Declaration of Independence and all the propaganda believed by flag-saluting schoolchildren - some of that is real some of the time. The other is the America that South America is more familiar with, the country responsible for banana republics and endless War on Drugs violence, the America of plantations and exploitation.

The problem America(complimentary) is currently facing is the rebound of America(derogatory). It has elected its own Peron, and is turning into a dysfunctional South American country, driven by exactly the same forces.

[Nursie]

Sorry, name's taken.

I know you're making a point by linking it to 1984, but Oceania is a real name for a continent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania

[Der_Einzige]

The most bootlicking anglos in the world are the Australians , despite the extreme competition that NZ and the UK give them. The Orwellian definition IS the real name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country

[Nursie]

Whatever. It’s still taken so you can’t use it for the Fascist States of America.