The irony of all this, depicted above with a generic AI created billionaire bending at the knees (you have to imagine he's before Trump), is that Ben Franklin ended up with his face on the $100 bill. I wonder how he'd feel today about the role money plays in politics?
He might remind us of the following:"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
I read the quote "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" in a comment to Eugene Robinson's Washington Post column "The risks of declaring fealty to Donald Trump: Don’t count on the president-elect to reward knee-bending with gratitude" (subscription).Robinson begins:
Titans of industry and commerce, beware. When you bend the knee to the Mad King, when you shower him with money and bathe him in flattery, he will receive your gifts with apparent gratitude. But he will want more. He will always want more.
He concludes:
But if history is any guide, reasonable people who try to work with Trump eventually reach a point where they feel they have to part ways with him. And when those reasonable people tell the world why, Trump lashes out at them. He tries to hurt them. He does not forgive — unless the “traitor” offers a humiliating public display of submission, as did Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, and so many other Republican politicians. But even then, Trump never, ever forgets.
Meanwhile, half of the country — the half that voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, and that believes Trump has forfeited the right to ever be seen as a “normal” president — sees the traffic jam of limousines in the Mar-a-Lago driveway as, most charitably, an obvious mistake.
What’s the definition of hubris? Telling oneself, “I’m going to be the one who finally talks some sense into Donald Trump. Surely, he’ll listen to me.”
I saw the Franklin quote, which was new to me, in the comments (click below to enlarge). You can read my reply to Kevin Slick on the bottom.
This is Kevin Slick's BlueSky page. He confirmed that the comment was his.
As I promised I posted the quote on BlueSky with the illustration I used for this blog:
It turns out that this quote has been the subject of scholarship, for example in the website "A Quote in Context" I found a 2020 article by Leya Delray on the subject (here) which goes into depth about the meaning.
This is the paragraph in Franklin's writing which includes the quote which I highlighted:
“…we have the most sensible Concern for the poor distressed Inhabitants of the Frontiers. We have taken every Step in our Power, consistent with the just Rights of the Freemen of Pennsylvania, for their Relief, and we have Reason to believe, that in the Midst of their Distresses they themselves do not wish us to go farther. Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety…”
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.
Here's an article about how liberals (supposedly) misuse the quote: How The World Butchered Benjamin Franklin’s Quote On Liberty Vs. Security.
That article begins:
One of America’s favorite liberal phrases has been sent through the political spin machine and polished into a Frankenstein of sorts, thus rendering it inaccurate and far from its original intention. You might have heard that American founding father Benjamin Franklin said something like “Those who give up liberty for security deserve neither.”
The quote has been the siren song of anti-war protesters and, most recently, the banner for mass online protests against the NSA’s surveillance program.
However, it goes on to explain:
The letter wasn’t about liberty but about taxes and the ability to “raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him.”
Indeed, if you look at the text surrounding the famous quote, it’s pretty clearly about money: “Our assemblies have of late had so many supply bill, and of such different kinds, rejected, on various pretences,” wrote Franklin.
There’s not much on liberty, as we understand the concept, in the entire letter.
You can see how the quote is quite relevant to the situation today where a billionaire bunch is bending at the knee before, as Robinson describes Trump, a mad King, with bags of cash to curry his favor. In this sense the quote applies to these drenched in dollars corporate king kissers. It is about their liberty and their safety to make as much money as possible.
Addendum:
I've admired Ben Franklin since I was a child and read the 1939 book "Ben and Me" which is a story told from the perspective of a mouse, Amos, who lived in his house and became his good friend and advisor.
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