Freedom or Security?

I agree. Freedom for me. Anything that happens during that is fate ... and you can't control that anyway.

51% of 61% of the 40% of registered voters in my country choose to give up both! that's like almost half of 20% of the population...a mandate if I've ever seen one! I bet the empire had low voter turn out too
...you can tell that I'm being vauge and non-specific right?

Freedom always must have a limit. Certainly I would give up some of my rights in order to obtain security. In fact, that's how society works.

It's interesting that this is now an issue for the American government...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/aliberties

as I said, in my country, a very small number of people made the descision for the whole country to give up both

Oh dear, what an unfortunate mess!

AC

Well you cant enjoy freedom if you're dead....

That's debatable.

AC

Be careful this doesn't become too political

Interesting topic, but rather simplistic 'yea or nay' expectations. It's not so simple. People can say they want freedom over a police state, but that only lasts until the bombings start, until mothers and children start getting killed at the grocery store, until planes or spaceships start falling out of the sky. Economies are disrupted, the monetary unit devalues, people lose jobs, you get hungry enough and lose your homes and suddenly a police state looks like a good idea.

Living in a republic is hard, keeping it one is harder. Sometimes the price you pay - freedom isn't free - is going to be in blood.

Look at the opening battle scene in RotS. As the two fighters roll down, the camera pans down and you can see the surface of Coruscant all the waaaaaaaay down. Beneath a battle? The surface is getting absolutely trashed. Imagine any city in Germany during WWII but on a world wide scale. Hundreds of miles of filled to brim high rise dwellings getting obliterated. I can't even imagine the loss of life going on on the surface of Coruscant during that battle. 9-11 cost Americans over 3000 lives. We had time to evacuate most everyone otherwise the death toll would have been in the 10s of thousands.

Now imagine that on a daily basis for the people of the GFFA Republic...I think they think having protection is a good idea.

Not to get off topic, but did anyone know the USA has been in a state of emergency since 1933 when FDR took over! Every president since has renewed it, even during times of peace.

Liberty, hands down. Security is mostly an illusion. Only elites of a sovereign
ever really experience "security." Do impoverished and unfortunate peoples enjoy
the rewards of "security"? Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.

Anakin demonstrates in AOTC that he has an authoritarian streak in him
with his "then they should be made to" comment about agreeing about what
is best for everyone.

We rattle our chains to show we are free.

Freedom.

We only live for so long, we should enjoy life while we can.

Freedom isn't free. Never has been, never will be. Unfortunately we live in a world where there are true and real threats against this nation, and all who choose freedom as their standard. The enemy uses our freedom against us, but that's the price we pay.

people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both"

-Ben Franklin

Spoken by a true elite of society. Brilliant quote. BUt without some sort of security, anarchy would reign, and that would lead to too much calamity. Franklin writing this to convince his new society as well. I must say that by not having some semblance of secuirty, you can lose freedoms. Let's say traffic signals for example are a form of secuirty, they are accepted and agreed upon and they work to keep traffic going and to keep people more or less safe from crashing into each other. If these and the lanes were gone, then the resulting accidents from the removal of order and a secure sense of order would leave us worse off. Would I want to be free to drive down whatever side I wanted, or rather allow others to do so? No. If that makes me a fascist then so be it. So his quote is good but doesn;t apply to this trivial example.

Here's a nice quote by Cicero (the Roman orator) in English of course

"The fruit of too much liberty is slavery"