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Comment by vimalg2 | Hacker News Reader

Yes. RMS may take rather unrealistic positions in today's capitalist society, but he's the only one around who has internalized Ben Franklin's famous quote:

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

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Do you mean idealistic? I don't think RMS fails to perceive reality, he just thinks fighting statu quo and the current trends is worth it.

idealistic? what are you talking about? the man created an operating system from scratch to make his ideals real. How many people today have the chance to learn how to code and contribute their work back thanks to GNU? The status quo is so much better today because someone fought and didn't accept the forming trends of his time.

OT: I read once that this quote is falsely attributed to Franklin, i.e., he's not known to actually ever have said that. But I cannot find a citation.

The generally reputable wikiquotes has the following in the "sourced" section:

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

With numerous paraphrases.

Thanks for that!

If only things were so simple in real life where liberty is often abused so as to threaten the safety of others.

Are you talking about hate speech or hate crimes?

Only one deserves punishment.

Only one deserves legal punishment. Hate speech should be punished with verbal attacks.

Well without that then the quote would be vapid. It's clear that there is a tension there, but Franklin's position is that liberty is worth the risk.

There isn't really much of a tension there. For the most part liberty increases security; it is only in very narrow situations, such as war-making, that it does not. Several libertarians, conservatives, and even Bruce Schneier have been pointing that out repeatedly, especially in anti-PATRIOT Act articles, over the last decade.

The problem is that many restrictions on freedom can give the illusion of security, and too many people are willing to sacrifice their own and others freedom for those warm fuzzies.

If only things were so simple in real life where liberty is often abused so as to threaten the safety of others.

The historical trend has been the other way around: as societies have become more free in general, they have also become safer in general. I would much rather live in the liberty of the United States, where I enjoy a crime-free neighborhood, than in the one-party dictatorship of China in the 1980s, where I saw more fights among strangers in public in three weeks in three different cities than I have seen in an entire lifetime traveling all over the United States.

See Steven Pinker's new book

http://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0...

for more about increasing safety of human societies over time (when the long-term trend has also plainly been in the direction of greater individual liberty for all aspects of human behavior).

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