There is a natural tension in human affairs between freedom and safety. This tension has been highlighted by the COVID pandemic and was brought into sharp focus by President Biden’s fallacious and dismissive remark about freedom during his recent, odd appearance on a CNN town hall. His uncomfortable attempt at sarcasm “'I have the freedom to kill you with my COVID.’ No, I mean come on! Freedom...” was addled by any number of factors. The President appears to believe that freedom and safety are exclusive matters of preference, like iPhone versus Android. The President’s rather shallow attention to the issue is consistent with Arnold Schwarzenegger's more pointed opinion, “Screw your freedom!”
Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Schwarzenegger seem of the opinions that safety is preferable to freedom, and that one can be had by merely relinquishing a sufficient quantity of the other. Both propositions are false.
The relative
importance of liberty and safety is not a novel question. It is the
basis of Benjamin Franklin's aphorism that those who would give up
liberty for a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety, and the
more subtle metaphorical adage of J. A. Shedd: "A ship in a harbor is
safe, but that is not what ships are built for." ...............To Read More.......
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