It's not unlike people misattributing the quote about the net, censorship, and damage to mean the internet, When it actually referred to USENET (a system that was, essentially, censored by collective action of internet service providers ceasing to store and forward its messages, some because they perceived it as obsolete, some because they believe they would have personal responsibility, morally if not legally, for the way people use the channel).
The simplistic interpretation of the Franklin quote breaks down very quickly when one observes that most of the Founding Fathers agreed significantly with Locke's social contract theory, which is very much relinquishing individual, personal liberties for collective safety.
WITTES: He was writing about a tax dispute between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the family of the Penns, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony who ruled it from afar. And the legislature was trying to tax the Penn family lands to pay for frontier defense during the French and Indian War. And the Penn family kept instructing the governor to veto. Franklin felt that this was a great affront to the ability of the legislature to govern. And so he actually meant purchase a little temporary safety very literally. The Penn family was trying to give a lump sum of money in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it.
SIEGEL: So far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation.
WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.
However this misunderstanding alone is not a reason on it's own to dismiss Ygg2's statement.
I somewhat disagree. Without the assumed historical connotation of the quote, which as you have just indicated is incorrect, the thought itself (trading liberty for safety yields neither) is just false. It is simply one of the trades one must do in a stable society.
Unsafe situations do not yeild themselves into liberty. Instead, they are the exact situations when violent authoritarian groups arise. One way to push toward own dictatorship is to consciously push the country you are in into disorder and unsafety. (Famously, Nazi did exactly that.)
Meanwhile, free people seek themselves safety. Meanwhile, authoritarian groups tend to push for eager to fight risk taking masculinity.
It's not unlike people misattributing the quote about the net, censorship, and damage to mean the internet, When it actually referred to USENET (a system that was, essentially, censored by collective action of internet service providers ceasing to store and forward its messages, some because they perceived it as obsolete, some because they believe they would have personal responsibility, morally if not legally, for the way people use the channel).
The simplistic interpretation of the Franklin quote breaks down very quickly when one observes that most of the Founding Fathers agreed significantly with Locke's social contract theory, which is very much relinquishing individual, personal liberties for collective safety.