Freedom or Security?

^^^as long as you're lucky enough to live in America or another free and secure nation...

 

I would choose to be free. The government should protect your giths, never take them away in the name of security, like Palpatine does to the galaxy(represented by the Senate). And Anakin always mirrors the galaxy, who also gives up his freedom to Sidiousfor security in his life (saving Padme).

 

Free & secure? Right.
Tell that to the Poles; you remember them right? France and England garaunteed protection, two weeks later Hitler was eating kippers in Krackow.


Chimpanzee w/ 3 flash cards, each card with a name of one of the three last presidential canadiates = the intelligence acumen of the average american voter. A slothy bi-pedal beast who believes "goodness" and "justice" automatically come into being.

 

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

 

the simple fact is that every single one of us have already given up freedom in change of security...

 

My security was not given up; it was removed.
You can not 'secure' what you do not have.

 

By the way, this thread is on the verge of being locked.

 

Freedom to do what exactly?

Security *from* what?

This isn't as clear cut as some of you are making it out to be.

"Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master."

-- Sallust - (Roman historian - c. 40 B.C.)

 

I would like to have the freedom to be safe. You do the math.

 

Dark all the way, doing it whit a hot chick, killing jedis, having cool eyes. What more can you ask?

 

The thread doesn't HAVE to be locked if people can discuss Lucas' political message without getting personal.

It's obvious some of the stuff Lucas has written for AOTC and ROTS is relevant to real life. In AOTC we have the Congress of the Republic giving the Chancellor emergency powers at the same time the US Congress has just passed the USA PATRIOT Act. In ROTS we have 9/11-like imagery of a burning Jedi Temple and Anakin has lines like, "You're either with me or you're my enemy" and he will even claim to be defending freedom (since Anakin doesn't KNOW he's evil). It's inevitable that some people will be reminded of President Bush's similar words and debatable whether Lucas intended the similarity.

Conservative Star Wars fans will resist the comparisons and liberal ones will exaggerate them. To avoid offending anyone Lucas will say that we wrote the story 30 years ago and that he's commenting on human history and not current events, but the reality is that he writes the actual scripts and the actual lines as late as possible in production of each film and he's not unaware of what's going on in the world when he comes up with this stuff.

Nobody should put words in Lucas' mouth to try to figure out his politics, but nobody should ignore what he writes nor the context in which he writes it just because they don't like the message.

 

masterskywalker - have you ever read the Spiritual teachings of Marcus Aurealius?

 

kfiehfew;dfkljdsflk``

 

Congress GIVING what it does not have?
Pardon me, but the 9/11 "disaster" as you people term it, is more akin to the Reichstag fire in Germany.

 

Can SOME of you please get back to topic? And this doesn't have to get locked if you guys don't get into a political bashing debate and comment on anything (in the wrong way) about recent events.

I have to do a big English paper, due in late May, and I might use this as a topic. And if I do choose this topic I might put some of your responses as quotes in my report. I put this in 3SA instead of Senate because I want responses of the everyday kind of guy/girl, not just of big debaters, like the "politicans" on the Senate Floor. And it does directly relate to ROTS as well.

Thanks to everyone who HAS added anything intelligent to this thread!

 

If I were a high level functionary I would choose Security every time. I would have the power and authority to sidestep most of the problems the little people have.

If I was someone else freedom every time

Darth Divorce
----------------------------------------------------------
If Sidious gave me the same choice, I would take it.

 

Politics threads r good.








some bush-bashing to be done here, i sense ( or paul martin bashing if you live in CANADA)

 

freedom is at best an illusion created by those in power to make it appear as if we (the subjects being 'controlled') have a 'real' choice...

no one is completely free. the fact that we silently accept being stripped of our rights testaments to this fact. we willingly delegate the definiton of freedom to those who speak on our behalf.

it's a democratic agreement to be sure, but nevertheless an act of reassigning responsibility.

 

Thanks for that post, Magic Al. But one doesn't need to guess what Lucas' political views are. They're online.

http://www.newsmeat.com/celebrity_political_donations/George_Lucas.php

 

Oh no...

Don't bring politics into Star Wars!!!

 

Tion Meddon, your question is which would I chose - freedom or security? Well it's not an issue that deals with absolutes; it deals with degrees of each. If you were to have 100% of the security that you could have, you would be stuck in a room in a bunker under a mountain which would resistant to a nuclear act. This is obviously not going to occur, even if cost was not a factor. If you had total freedom, you would probably be robbed on a daily basis, or worse. As a society, we give up a reasonable amount of freedom in exchange for a reasonable amount of security (well those of us who are fortunate that is). There will always be some debate about how much of each we should have, but I think what is clear is that a dictatorship is not the way to go, and neither is lawless abandon. Yes, things do seem to get accomplished in a dictatorship, but rarely is it for the good of the population. As someone once said "Absolute power corrupts absolutely".

I also think that freedom breds security, to an extent anyway. I think free countries tend to move toward democracy rather than away from it. That will lead to a good mix of the two.

So if I was FORCED to choose between the two, total freedom or total security, I would have to say freedom. It wouldn't be ideal, but I think that it would be the more likely of the two to end up where I would like to be.

 

I agree with what Darth IRS said.

Freedom is a great thing, but there are common sense limits. For example, we have traffic lights and stop signs on the roads to organize the traffic flow so that people are more safe when driving their cars.

Free societies also almost always choose a democratic form of government. Right now we're actually seeing the start of this in the Middle East. The best part is that democracies rarily--if ever-- go to war with one another.

ROTS seems to tell the story of how a democracy is "hijacked" by a dictator, who has made the people he represents believe he can keep them safe-- thereby granting him emergency powers.

Emergency powers in a time of war or other crisis are a necessary evil, imho. That is, as long as they don't go too far-- and a healthy debate over this is certainly good for any democracy. These emergency powers can help the government do its job of protecting the people so that they can function in their daily lives and not have to constantly live in fear for themselves and their families.

Now, in ROTS Palpatine is revealed to be the cause of the war, so he will obviously not be relinquishing his emergency powers. This is where the problems come into play. Emergency powers are just that-- powers believed necessary to deal with an emergency, and no emergency lasts forever. Over time, adding emergency powers crisis after crisis, a dictatorship begins to emerge. This is what Palpatine has done in the PT. And that is a funny thing with democracies in general-- the people have the choice to give up their democracy in favor of a dictatorship!

 

I'd rathe rhave freedom, we only live for so long.

 

Thanks for bumping this useless thread back to the top.

 

Funny you ask that question. That was the quote I chose for my signature. See below.