by dhhfbfrbjds

Created on: May 14, 2008

Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers, once said:

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

As someone who is essentially a Libertarian; I have used this quote many times and with great effect in debates with those people who espouse such arguments as "Freedom isn't Free" and who advocate curtailing freedoms for security. It is particularly effective against Americans as they more than anyone believe in the wisdom of the founding fathers.

However the United Sates they seem to have forgotten the principles on which their nation was founded. A secular nation founded on the ideals of Liberty and Justice. This is being destroyed. America was founded as the most beautiful place in the world where all men were equal (well, sort of) but these ideals have been slowly eroded until all that is left is this self-interested, capitalist, imperialist monster to whom civil liberties are merely a PR exercise.

By sacrificing these freedoms they have created a self fulfilling prophecy. They have marginalised young muslims and created the problem themselves. If you were a young muslim falsely accused of links to a terrorist organisation and incarcerated, or worse deported to a foreign country and tortured I imagine that more than anything would convince you that the United States was evil.

I digress; I did not want this to turn into a rabid attack upon the United States. Simply instead an eulogy for those ideas of liberty that led to the birth of what should have been the Greatest of Nation. I imagine if Franklin, Jefferson and Paine were alive today then we would either have a revolution on our hands or they would be languishing orange jump suits in an obscure corner of Cuba.

I myself being a Briton and a vehement liberal am somewhat vocal about these issues. However it would be hypocritical of me not to mention the destruction of liberty continuing in my own country people can now be put in prison simply for having the wrong reading material. I have read The Communist Manifesto and The Rights of Man conversely I have read the Wealth of Nations and the works of Solzhenitsyn and Chomsky. I have even leafed through the Anarchist cookbook this is some countries would get me thrown in jail. Now I have to ask what would happen if the police, for whatever reason, were searching my home and found a copy of The Anarchist cookbook, absolutely nothing because I am white and agnostic. However if they found this in the home of a Muslim Briton of Pakistani extraction...

This fact sickens me intellectual material of any kind should not be limited. Why is it that the work of a random radical cleric will land you in prison but you can by Mein Kampf from your local bookstore. Not that Mein Kampf should be illegal; intellectual material is separated from the ideology that it contains whatever that maybe.

I cannot allow Essential Liberties in which I believe to be eroded out of the exploitation of fear. And no threat real or imagined should curtail the freedom of the individual.

That one isn't Franklin; its just little old me.

And that is why I will go on reading and writing and bellowing and the scared neo-con relatives of my friends.

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