Those Who Give Up Essential Liberty

A quote that is very popular on the Internet is:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

— Benjamin Franklin, Reply to the Governor from the Pennsylvania Assembly

Misunderstood Quotation

Reading this, it's obvious they are referring to the right of the Assembly, as representing Pennsylvania's citizens, to frame and pass bills (the 'liberty') rather than needing to guess at them till they arrive at one that matches what the Governor and the Penns had already decided on; and which is the condition upon which the Governor will fund territorial defence (the 'safety'). Others have spoken about this better than I have, and I was alerted to this meaning by them. Fine, that's all very well.

Argument From Authority

But there's no reason a specific line has to be forever associated with its origin. Perhaps people now want to say something like "If you give up your personal freedom to be safe temporarily, you don't deserve to be personally free or safe" and Franklin's phrase is just a pithy way to say that so it might as well be repurposed. That reason is justifiable on its own. There's a little bit of the usual Intellectual Property Maximization in citing the author but obviously the bigger part is that people are trying to name-drop a famous intellectual in order to gain credibility by association.

But if Benjamin Franklin's name is to be considered a valid grantor of weight to a quote, one might as well quote other things that old Franklin said. We can try on a few for size to see if such weight-granting is justified after all.

And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red?

— Benjamin Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c.

Indeed, it would be fallacious to claim the truth of something from the stature of the writer. For, after all, if one were to do that, one would be faced with the exceedingly unfortunate position of finding themselves endorsing the idea that there was an innate nature to those who were condemned in Franklin's time to slavery that meant that America could not compete with the UK through the use of slave labour:

Tis an ill-grounded Opinion that by the Labour of Slaves, America may possibly vie in Cheapness of Manufactures with Britain. The Labour of Slaves can never be so cheap here as the Labour of working Men is in Britain. Any one may compute it. Interest of Money is in the Colonies from 6 'to 10 per Cent...his Pilfering from Time to Time, almost every Slave being by Nature a Thief...

— Benjamin Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.

For my part, I don't think of Benjamin Franklin as anything but a great man of his time. There are realities of every age and doubtless my sins as a non-vegetarian will not be replayed for history only because I am somewhat less notable than he is.

Prima Facie Absurdity

So then we are left with the actual statement of the text which says that you don't deserve either essential freedom or safety if you are willing to trade the former for a temporary amount of the latter. But that is rather easily rebuttable.

Trivial Counterexample

A trivial opposition is that if you were set upon by a violent man, and were trying to fight him off, you would gladly welcome police officers separating and jailing you both pending discovery of who initiated harm to whom. It would be absurd for the police to say that you deserve neither the temporary safety of being rescued from a knife-wielding lunatic nor the essential freedom to walk the streets.

That would make it completely reasonable for them to throw you in a cell with the lunatic and turn a blind eye to what happens. After all, you deserve neither safety nor liberty, and throwing you in that cell only loses you what you had no right to anyway.

That is obviously absurd.

Less Trivial Examples

Perhaps less specially-constructed an example is the case of the various situations that societies face when the externalities due to otherwise reasonable human behavior overwhelm the society itself. The COVID-19 pandemic was one such, but so is any practice of Directly Observed Treatment, and certainly any law preventing the revealing of state secrets. The essential freedoms here are to walk unmolested in public and gather with one's associates; to not consume what one doesn't wish to consume; and to speak freely about what one knows. The temporary safety is that of reduced infection and transmission, the prevention of advanced resistant pathogens, and the protection of national security. These all qualify obviously as essential freedoms that we happily give up to gain temporary security.

Conclusion

In fact, Franklin was right when he said what he did and the reuse of his words is entirely wrong. And so I have decided to promote this phrase to the list of Bozo Bit Phrases used primarily for me to detect bozos.