Tag Archives: Benjamin Franklin

A little civil disobedience can be a good thing…

Well…it’s about time that we Americans started to say “enough” to the actions of government as embodied in the TSA and their new passenger screening techniques that are being rolled out at US airports. First, it was the pilots that started to rebel at being fondled or blasted with radiation so they could do their jobs, now, ordinary people have started to do the same, to say “enough” to the gradual chipping way of our freedoms to the overreaching god of security. But, as you could easily predict, the masses…that great group of the easily led who have bought into the lie that there is danger under every bush, who have bought into the lie that by giving up the basic freedom to be let alone, they can be safe, have vilified these individuals. How has safety come to trump freedom and those who stand up for it?

I want to encourage this kind of behavior that says “enough”, that says just wait a minute, that says no one asked me if I wanted to be afraid….that no one asked any of us whether the American people are such wusses that we can’t take a little danger in exchange for freedom. All of the generations before us made the right decision, that freedom from government interference is a core value that we will not give up because some danger befalls us…we have always stood up as a nation and said we are tougher, we are greater than that…there is no power on earth that could make us give up our freedom because we are afraid and these times are no different.

I have to pass on one of the quotes from Benjamin Franklin that I always believe goes to the core of the balance we need to remember in America…and points out the danger we are in succinctly….”those who give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither”. Thanks, Ben…