Give Me Freedom Or Give Me Security

The title is slightly different than the line, “Give me freedom or give me death.” Times have changed, but not necessarily as recent as we might think. I have been trying to catch up on my reading in The Daily Drucker. The December 26 entry is a passage from The End of Economic Man written in 1939. Read this and think of how this could still apply today to issues concerning U.S. Homeland Security, the situation in Iraq, the rising prison population, or gun control.

“The masses, then, have become prepared to abandon freedom if this promises to reestablish the rationality of the world. If freedom is incompatible with equality, they will give up freedom. If it is incompatible with security, they will decide for security. To be free or not has become a secondary question, since the freedom available does not help to banish the demons. Since the “free” society is the one that is threatened by the demons, it seems more than plausible to blame freedom and to expect delivery from despair through the abandonment of freedom.”

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