Ben Franklin is supposed to have said:
Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
A variant that I like better is:
Those who would trade liberty for safety will end up with neither.
As I watch self-described ‘libertarians’ scramble to move away from one coercion-based program (the current public school system) and towards another (school choice), because it will ‘provide better outcomes’, I can’t help thinking that Franklin’s maxim is just a particular case of a more general one:
Those who would trade general principles for specific outcomes will end up with neither.
