The original quote is "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety", and it's generally attributed to Benjamin Franklin (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin). However, according to the linked WikiQuote page, Franklin denied that he authored the phrase, and would take credit only for publishing it.
Regardless of who first said it or how, I heartily agree with the sentiment.
It seems to me that it is a poor decision to sacrifice the rights that make us free in an attempt to keep others from taking those rights from us.
Our principles, our ideals, as written in the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence are worth fighting for, worth dying for, and should be the last thing that we would consider abandoning, if we believe what we profess to believe. Every time we turn our back on our neighbor's rights we regret it.
When we were attacked we fought back. I have no problem with that. Fighting back was the right thing to do.
What chilled me though was reading things like the suspending of Habeas Corpus, or at least the severe restrictions that we put on it. When we did that we sacrificed the very thing that we were fighting to preserve, people's rights, the ideas that make us free.
I would like us to restate to the world what we believe human rights to be, and thenchange our fighting methods to reflect those rights, those beliefs.
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Regardless of who first said it or how, I heartily agree with the sentiment.
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A poor decision
Our principles, our ideals, as written in the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence are worth fighting for, worth dying for, and should be the last thing that we would consider abandoning, if we believe what we profess to believe. Every time we turn our back on our neighbor's rights we regret it.
When we were attacked we fought back. I have no problem with that. Fighting back was the right thing to do.
What chilled me though was reading things like the suspending of Habeas Corpus, or at least the severe restrictions that we put on it. When we did that we sacrificed the very thing that we were fighting to preserve, people's rights, the ideas that make us free.
I would like us to restate to the world what we believe human rights to be, and thenchange our fighting methods to reflect those rights, those beliefs.