Comment Re:Trading Freedom for Security? (Score 1, Insightful) 264
It's a false comparison anyway.
In these bargains we do not trade "freedom for security" against some threat; instead we trade away our freedoms for a different kind of threat. History has shown that governments can be as dangerous to their populace as the criminals against whom theysupposedly protect. By giving up our freedoms, we are merely trading the types of risk we face: criminals, terrorists, et al. are an extremely rare but potentially quite deadly threat, whereas governments are an all-pervasive threat (to life and property) but the effects are usually much more limited in scope (usually restrictions on how you act or spend your money at first, although governments also have the potential to be far more dangerous).
Governments claim we must give up freedom for security, but we get no security out of the trade; we merely exchange an immediate (if unlikely) danger for a certain one down the road. Unfortunately, evolution has left our species with a poor ability to assess danger beyond the immediate future, a fact of which governments take advantage when they trot out their "facts" and "statistics" about how horrible is terrorism. Scared by the loud noise, we dart for any apparent shelter, often mistaking an alligator's jaws for a sheltering cave.
Let's not all be scared apes; let us look before we leap. The threat from which we need "protecting" is largely bluster and the security we are being promised is an illusion. Neither are worth sacrificing our freedoms.