which would you rather have?

today I talked with one of my teachers about a question that was going around my social studies class's.

Would you rather have more freedom and less safety?

or

Would you rather have more safety , but have to give up some freedoms?


just post your thoughts.

 

Those who are willing to give up their freedom to improve their security, will gain little and deserve neither. -quote from some guy

Yes, there are extremes when it might be considerable to exchange a wee bit of freedom for security.
But in modern day society I will always nearly always favor freedom over security.

 

Freedom for sure.Security is getting to be a pain.I had to jump through more hoops to leave the U.S. than I did to enter Canada.

 

Freedom.

Benjamin Franklin said those who are willing to give up freedom for security will have neither.

 

It is very easy to say 'freedom' when you live in a safe, rich and fortunate country such as America or Australia, but I imagine that I would think very differently if I lived in a war torn country where security was a real, threatening everyday concern, and not just something which 'happens to other people'

I don't think one can ever say that either freedom or security will always be preferrable to the other in any given situation...

 

I was going to say security, but these quotes have left me unsure. So I'd say both are equally important and it's pretty hard to favour one over the other.

 

Well said Blaster. Ultimately there has to be a balance, you can never have total freedom any more than you can ever have total security and within the laws of anything other than a totally anarchic society you sacrifice some freedom for security. Really it's not and can never be an either/or question.

 

As long as you are not free to impose your will on others and security isn't imposing,you're doing ok.

 

its been said that the patriot act is infringeing apon and dangerous to the bill of rights , i personally have not noticed any new infringments ( other than the silly airport seaches of grandmas and school girls )..any one else have any problems from the new laws ?

 

Let Singapore be your case study my friends!hahaha

 

No, although to hear the left-wing types whining, you'd think everybody in the country was routinely being strip searched on a regular basis! :roll:

 

I must admit,I'm curious.Explain please.

 

This quote has been brought up a couple of times. It is a nice soundbite, but like all soundbites it does not really reflect reality very well.

For example, airport security is limiting on my freedoms. Every time I want to fly I know that I and my luggage will be searched to some extent. This has been with us for some decades now. However, it is with us for a damn good reason, which is to help air travel be more secure and to prevent airliners from being hijacked, blown up, or (more recently) taken over and flown into buildings. And mostly it seems to work. How often are airliners hijacked these days?

 

I can seen that but I think what Franklin was hinting at is what is done in the name of security can also be used for less honorable purposes. At some point we have to draw a line.

Hitler and Stalin did things in name of security.

I'm not saying we should not have any kind of security. Just saying it needs to be limited to only what is necessary and practical and should be open to public scrutiny rather than simply taking it at face value.

 

Oh yes, I totally agree with that. However, like most things in life it is a fine line that needs constant checking. Too much of either (well, more like to little of either) can become a serious problem.

 

Smeghead has a good point here: most people in the West tend to think of their basic situation as one of freedom, in which every infringement of that freedom in the name of security is undesirable. However they often fail to realize just how much of their freedom is already infringed, without this ever being protested, for the sake of security. The very existence of a justice system is an infringement of individual freedom of action, yet how many people will you find who are willing to state that we'd be better off without it?

Of course, I'm not keen on giving up more freedoms in return for security either, but it's hard to say exactly where you'd want to draw the line.

 

I think Ben Franklin knew those freakin' 24-hour security-cameras were in our future when he made that statement.

That's one trend I despise. England seems keen on the notion of having it's citizens under constant surveilance. Here in the USA, it's becoming more and more common. Some major cities have traffic lights with monitors that send you a ticket automatically if you run a red-light. A camera records your license-plate # and "you're busted."

Tim

 

I couldn't agree more, in the UK and particularly in London their are Red Light Cameras at Traffic lights, Speed Cameras all over the place, a newish one is Banned Turn Offence cameras and boxed junction cameras, Cameras on Bus lanes, and CCTV cameras specifically covering all of those cameras mentioned above.

Yep we've seriously got cameras watching the cameras watching the people... :roll:

 

Wow.

 

I like those traffic cameras. It means all the gits out there who seem to think that normal rules of the road don't apply to them get caught.