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even believe in absolute free speech, or that the owners of a "platform" had no right to determine what could or could not be published on that plaform: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.
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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...