Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Ben Franklin
I know I'm always the off topic poster so first let me say, I might be switching to Apple because of the Encryption. Good job Apple.
In regards to the quote above, what is essential liberty? Stating essential liberty implies that there is nonessential liberty as well, does it not?
Once we analyze the quote, we go one of two ways.
- All liberty is essential and referred to as such. Thus Ben was anti-taxation and did not support the existence of government in any form (not likely but necessary to propose).
Or
- Some liberty is non-essential, thus the quote states nothing we can learn about liberty due to the lack of a definition for essential and non-essential liberties. This means Ben is claiming that there are some liberties worth giving up to purchase temporary safety and we(today)can't know what's what without asking him. We can quote him and apply our own subjectivity to the quote, but then we've lost all clout from the quote and are better off just quoting ourselves.