this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2025
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I love it when libertarians quote this out of context, not realizing that it often contradicts their positions.
The quote is backing the right of the state legislature to levy taxes on wealthy assholes who want the benefit of property ownership and political power but who don't want to contribute to the welfare of society.
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century
He said it several times. For instance, he said it when the British Crown offered their protection and self-governance in exchange for not declaring independence from Britain.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/benjamin-franklin-on-the-trade-off-between-essential-liberty-and-temporary-safety-1775
And that doesn't contradict the fact that the quote was used to support the right of the legislature to tax the wealthy and property owners for the greater good of all citizens, including their long term (not short term) safety. The point still stands. The quote is not in defense of right wing libertarian philosophy and is being used out of context.
If you're just going to transparently use unrelated quotes for your propaganda, you might as well just make up the quotes.
Well, we will just have to agree to disagree on this one. 🙂
Except it's not a subjective topic like which flavor of ice cream is better. We can actually see whether the speaker of the quote would agree with your positions. You're not agreeing to disagree. You're saying you don't care about verifiable facts because you're not interested in intellectual honesty. You're saying you don't care what he actually thought and just want to use him to push your propaganda.
You shared your interpretation and I shared mine. I don't know how going in circles benefits anyone.
It's not an interpretation. You're ignoring the verifiable context of the quote and the speaker. You're actively choosing to misrepresent it for your propaganda. This undermines your narrative and marks you as transparently untrustworthy. If you don't care about that, then nothing you say has value.
The irony is that you don't need to be dishonest to undermine your propaganda. You've already been doing that with your honest enthusiasm for deregulation as if everyone thinks seatbelt laws are oppressive government overreach.
Okay fine. We can discuss it more if you want...
The intent of the quote in both my example and yours is to say "don't bow to a king". In my case, the King of England, in your case the Penn Family. You are correct that the way it was expressed in your context was a state legislator refusing to give a prominent family a tax break. In my case a refusal to accept terms to maintain status as a British colony. Either way, the intent of the quote is to not give up your liberty for a false sense of security.
I think the "No Kings" interpretation is a good one, given the recent No Kings pretests in the US, eh?
It wasn't just "don't bow to a king" but also "taxes are a legitimate method of funding the public welfare," which directly contradicts the right wing libertarian ethos. It was also saying that more permanent safety was an achievable goal without having to give up freedom. He wasn't saying that freedom (to regulate and tax as a representative body) and safety were always mutually exclusive. So to use such an example to say that people need the freedom to endanger multiple lives even though the safety provided by the regulation isn't just temporary is an absurd misappropriation. Dying in a car accident because a selfish asshole decides not to wear a seatbelt or removes the seatbelts from his vehicle isn't very free.