DICK CHENEY IS AN ASSHOLE

[Donovan]

Are you implying that my above statement is not accurate or is somehow foolish and naive?

No, in principal i would probably agree with it but I wonder if Benjamin Franklin would have ever said it if he had been living in the world we live in today?

Terrorists weren't kidnapping people and beheading them live on the internet back in his day.

Of course he'd have the same opinions. Franklin and the others were fighting the exact same sort of heavy-handed tyranny from England we are now seeing in our own government. If you don't like his words on the subject, how about Patrick Henry?

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.

Fear is the passion of slaves.

Or how about Thomas Paine?

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Or if your tastes run to your own countrymen, one John Milton for example:

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

Or let's go all the way back to see what Socrates has to say on right and wrong:

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

Get the idea? There is no substitute for freedom and liberty. None. Not safety, not security, not a peaceful night's sleep, and certainly not giving away one for the other. Guys like Assange and Snowden do what they do because otherwise no one will. And whether we agree or not we should be mindful of what they have shown us.