Post originally by arcady at 2004-12-13 22:19:00
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Yes the Benjamin quote is a good one, very anathema to the 'national security state' model put forth by current powers.

Jeferson had some good stuff on this as well. In reponse to Shay's rebellion which hsi friend Madison found so abhorrant, Jefferson wrote that an armed rebellion was in fact a great afirmation of the principles of liberty.

A bit far of a statement for modern thinkers, but our national founders were anything but advocates of security and a strong state.

You might like Thoreau's essay on Civil Disobediance. He was very much an advocate for an idea Bush seems to like as well:

"If you are not with us, you are against us."

Thoreau however, was more on the lines of:

'You are complicit in, and in essence a party to, anything you do not oppose.'

Similar ideas, both of them unfortunately too idealistly simplistic to be practical. After all, it is the same logic terrorists use to justify attacking civilians - they work to support the society, and thus the state, and are thus complicit in it.

Dworkin is a modern political theorist, and relevant here in this argument. Dworkin could be summed up as saying rights are those protections you have against the state. Liberty is thus a measure of your protection against that state.

By contrast conservative ideology holds that liberty is a measure of order:

"The only liberty I mean, is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist without them at all."

- Edmund Burke.

This was quote by Viet Dinh with the addition of:

"ordered liberty. Order and liberty, under this conception, are symbiotic; each is necessary to the stability and legitimacy essential for a government under law."

This comes as a part of speeches made to justify the concept of Enemy Combatants and imprisoning people without access to lawyers, trials, or press.