"but laws and norms of good behavior are always a balance between rights freedoms and safety / efficiency."
You must be not from the US. In the US, our freedoms come first and our founders constrained the governments` ability to interfere with those rights, even in the name of safety.
A popular Benjamin Franklin quote:
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Your freedom to drive on any side of the road is constrained for the general safety of all citizens.
Just as your freedom of speech is constrained to call out "fire" in a crowded space when there is none.
I wonder why Benjamin Franklin used the words "essential liberty".
I'm sure you and I would disagree on whether not wearing a mask in a crowded room is an essential liberty, or one that should be temporarily given up for the greater good. I would argue Benjamin Franklin would have a lot of faith in science and would be happy for citizens to give up that non-essential freedom for a while.
I have the freedom to continue burning carbon and eating steak .. but I wonder if those freedoms might now begin to encroach upon your freedoms to have a livable planet that isnt too warm to support our current population.
In the US, our freedoms come first and our founders constrained the governments` ability to interfere with those rights, even in the name of safety.
No. Contrary to popular libertarian belief, the founding fathers were actually trying to found a state, not a minarchist collective. While they did believe in a limited government, they also believed in the necessity of effective government, and they did not believe that personal liberty always took precedence.
Indeed, that quote you're pulling out is almost always misconstrued. Benjamin Franklin was arguing for more taxes to fund a defense against French and Native American attacks on the frontier[0,1]. In other words, for the power of government in the name of the collective and against individual liberty where that liberty threatens society.
The same Ben Franklin also became a devout advocate of vaccinations after losing a son to smallpox[1]. He certainly would not have been on the side of anti-vaxxers defying government quarantine or mask orders because "liberty."
Ben Franklin didn't even believe in absolute free speech, or that the owners of a "platform" had no right to determine what could or could not be published on that plaform:
"In the conduct of my newspaper, I carefully excluded all libelling and personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country. Whenever I was solicited to insert anything of that kind, and the writers pleaded, as they generally did, the liberty of the press, and that a newspaper was like a stage-coach, in which any one who would pay had a right to a place... "
...an opinion most of Hacker News would consider Orwellian and fascist.
Comments
"but laws and norms of good behavior are always a balance between rights freedoms and safety / efficiency."
You must be not from the US. In the US, our freedoms come first and our founders constrained the governments` ability to interfere with those rights, even in the name of safety.
A popular Benjamin Franklin quote:
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Your freedom to drive on any side of the road is constrained for the general safety of all citizens.
Just as your freedom of speech is constrained to call out "fire" in a crowded space when there is none.
I wonder why Benjamin Franklin used the words "essential liberty".
I'm sure you and I would disagree on whether not wearing a mask in a crowded room is an essential liberty, or one that should be temporarily given up for the greater good. I would argue Benjamin Franklin would have a lot of faith in science and would be happy for citizens to give up that non-essential freedom for a while.
I have the freedom to continue burning carbon and eating steak .. but I wonder if those freedoms might now begin to encroach upon your freedoms to have a livable planet that isnt too warm to support our current population.
No. Contrary to popular libertarian belief, the founding fathers were actually trying to found a state, not a minarchist collective. While they did believe in a limited government, they also believed in the necessity of effective government, and they did not believe that personal liberty always took precedence.
Indeed, that quote you're pulling out is almost always misconstrued. Benjamin Franklin was arguing for more taxes to fund a defense against French and Native American attacks on the frontier[0,1]. In other words, for the power of government in the name of the collective and against individual liberty where that liberty threatens society.
The same Ben Franklin also became a devout advocate of vaccinations after losing a son to smallpox[1]. He certainly would not have been on the side of anti-vaxxers defying government quarantine or mask orders because "liberty."
Ben Franklin didn't even believe in absolute free speech, or that the owners of a "platform" had no right to determine what could or could not be published on that plaform:
"In the conduct of my newspaper, I carefully excluded all libelling and personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country. Whenever I was solicited to insert anything of that kind, and the writers pleaded, as they generally did, the liberty of the press, and that a newspaper was like a stage-coach, in which any one who would pay had a right to a place... "
...an opinion most of Hacker News would consider Orwellian and fascist.
[0]https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
[1]https://www.chop.edu/news/feature-article-ben-franklin-pro-v...