Illusion of the Need for Silence

I'm going to state the corollary to my earlier post: if you believe in more than one right way, you are not also required to believe there are no wrong ways. I have actually seen some people worrying about this, so I say it to them (or at least I will say it from now on when I see this): you can consider things wrong. It does make for more complicated decisions about morality but is considerably more robust and does not require you to roll over for things you secretly believe are wrong or practice outright hypocrisy.

Of course, all this makes for more work when determining morality. Rather than simply rejecting deviation from the One Right Way or not bothering with the issue at all (except in an informal manner), one has to evaluate those things on their own merits. And that just now was an oversimplification, of course, for sheer ease of comprehension.

I know! Let's quote a Founding Father! That'll show them!

Benjamin Franklin:
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

I looked up the exact form of quote because I wanted to discuss it, but then my intended post changed because I noticed that people in quoting this tended to omit the modifier words. Without "essential" and "temporary", the quote assumes a very different and more absolute character. One can hold an interesting discussion about what is an essential liberty and why, or why the security gained through the surrender of essential liberties is temporary (the one you surrender it to gains the power to destroy not only the security it granted but also the security that was once granted by the liberty you gave up).

One cannot hold an interesting discussion about "If you give up any liberty for any kind of security, you don't deserve any of it." Nevermind that society is formed by constraints on individual liberty and even the most anarchistic society would be this way for reason of simple self-survival. Nevermind that the drive for security is one of the basic drives that has enabled us to survive at all as a species. All such nuances are thrown out in the shortened version, though I suspect many people don't realize this, or that what they're quoting isn't necessarily the full original.

On the other hand, "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." is a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin. But, taken into context, I suspect he is talking about those essential liberties. So, what are the essential liberties? They appear to be outlined in the Constitution and the Acts of Rights, and our country's founders have made their wills clear in many manners. And, moreover, the quote invites discussion of why this loss of liberty also leads to loss of security.

Anyway, I've seen the Benjamin Franklin line repeated often enough to lose its much of its meaning (and the short version doesn't help). Ann Rynd pod-clones seem to like it, too.

The original post was going to be about how the United States' founders weren't omniscient gods (though they had some good insights into government), but then I got distracted by this. I see a lot of quotes mangled like that, actually. Occam's Razor and Murphy's Law being particular famous examples.