Bill Maher: Reason I Am Willing To Negotiate Some Freedom For Security (VIDEO)

[egbertowillies]

Bill Maher “New Rules “provided a pragmatic insight into the NSA, Snowden, personal freedom debate. He starts with the Benjamin Franklin quote “They who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” which apparently was tweeted a couple times by Sarah Palin. Early on he joked that if Sarah Palin repeated a quote twice and placed it on Facebook, it is not a smart statement, “That cancels it out” he says.

Maher illustrated that Americans negotiate their freedoms throughout life all the time. It is the social contract the individual makes to make a society better for all. He quipped that inasmuch as the founding fathers were brilliant they were not fortune tellers. He said “When they wrote the 4th amendment they couldn’t foresee email and when they wrote the second amendment they couldn’t foresee Ted Nugent.”

Maher pragmatically understands that absolutism with regards to one’s freedom in a society where massive harm can be inflicted on large multitudes by a few, the tradeoff of some freedom within strict guidelines is required. He recognizes that while Snowden was likely the wrong messenger for the cause, Snowden opened up the debate and the conversation.

Below are select snippets from his New Rules monologue that makes the point succinctly.

[DesertFlower]

1. i agree with bill. nt

[Hoyt]

2. I really get tired of quotes from founding fathers, particularly about liberty from slave owners.

[Jamaal510]

9. +1

[AllINeedIsCoffee]

11. Oh, snap.

[nomorenomore08]

17. You have a very valid point. But I hesitate to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Know what I mean?

[Hoyt]

19. I hear you, but when you throw in denying women the vote, killing Native Americans

for their land, they were really a despicable and hypocritical bunch.

[nomorenomore08]

23. Which is why, in historical terms, I always consider ideas more important than people.

People are mortal, and they all tend to have glaring flaws of their own. But their ideas can live on for centuries, or even millennia. So that even a fairly unethical person - e.g. Thomas Jefferson - can wind up positively influencing the world, in some respects.

[bemildred]

3. Horseshit. You give up freedom to get security, and you get neither, like now. nt

[SunSeeker]

8. So we should get rid of airport scanners? Ignore stoplights?

Face it, living in a civilized society involves trade-offs of freedom for security. Platitudes that suggest any encroachment on your freedom should not be allowed, regardless of what you are trading it for, and no matter how little it actually impacts your life, is silly Palinesque nonsense.

Of course we should weigh every encroachment on our freedom with what we gain for it. That was the whole point of Maher's statement, which I am sure you did not even listen to.

[JayhawkSD]

4. Bill Maher if full of it.

And made even more ridiculous when one points out the what we are being kept safe from are not even a real national security threat. We are responding to a handful of guys who have nothing bigger than an RPG with so-called security measures more draconian than those we used to defend ourselves against a Soviet state which had thousands of nuclear missiles and armies in the millions.

We didn't spy on our own citizens when the Soviet Union was the enemy.

We didn't kill our own citizens without due process when the Soviet Union was the enemy.

We didn't capture people far from any battlefield and hold them in prison camps forever when the Soviet Union was the enemy.

We didn't torture people when the Soviet Union was the enemy.

We didn't have presidents who endlessly preached about a "first duty" to "keep America safe" from thousands of missiles and millions of tanks, but we have presidents who prattle enndlessly about "keeping the nation safe" from a handful of fanatics armed with man portable weapons.

The idiocy of this national state of mind is simply beyond belief.

[Yavin4]

5. Umm...

We didn't spy on our own citizens when the Soviet Union was the enemy.

Three words: J. Edgar Hoover

We didn't kill our own citizens without due process when the Soviet Union was the enemy.

That's news to labor organizers in the early 20th century, and to civil rights marchers in the 1950s and 60s.

We didn't capture people far from any battlefield and hold them in prison camps forever when the Soviet Union was the enemy.

Some Japanese-Americans may quibble with you there.

We didn't torture people when the Soviet Union was the enemy.

Some Vietnamese may disagree with you.

[SunSeeker]

7. There you go bringing facts into the conversation...

Thank you!

[JayhawkSD]

15. I'm talking about what is and was official policy.

The problem with the Bush regime was not that they used torture. It was that they made torture the acknowledged official policy of this nation. It was that they made this nation into one which sanctions the torture of its captives.

J. Edgar Hoover did what he did without the official sanction of Congress or the executive. The NSA, CIA and others do worse today, and they do it with the full blessing of Congress and under the direction of the executive.

Incarcerating the Japanese-American people was wrong. We have admitted that and made reparation. We are now doing worse, and are doing so without remorse and justifying it with falsehoods.

And you didn't even try to refute my major point, which is that we are "being kept safe" from a threat which is almost entirely imaginary. Whatever we did in the Cold War era, and notwithstanding your hyperbole, it was less intrusive and was done without government sanction, it was at least in the name of defending the nation from a real threat. The nation, not a handful of people; and a threat consisting of thousands of nuclear missiles, not a few fanatics with hand grenades.

[Yavin4]

22. Umm.."a threat which is almost entirely imaginary." Not True.

9/11 did happen, and before that, there were indeed several attempts to mass kill innocent people. So, it's not entirely imaginary.

With that said, we do need congress to take an active role in reviewing this program.

[JayhawkSD]

24. Yes, 9/11 happened

But it was not even close to destroying this nation, or even seriously crippling us as a nation. Terrorism never has been, is not now and never will be a "national security threat." More people are killed on our highways in one month than have been killed by terrorists within our borders in all of recorded history. A person is far more likely to be killed by lightening than by a terrorist in this country.

"Attempts to mass kill?" The most credible attempt would have killed on the order of magnitude of 100, and none of the so-called terrorist attempts have been prevented by the infringements of civil liberties, by torture, or by killing women and children overseas.

Our leadership has turned this nation into a pack of sniveling children hiding under beds.

[4bucksagallon]

16. As a Vietnam combat veteran let me just say....

"We didn't torture people when the Soviet Union was the enemy."
"Some Vietnamese may disagree with you."

You took the words right out of my mouth. I don't understand where some people were back in the day or what rock they have been hiding under for the past 50 or 60 years.

[JayhawkSD]

25. Yes, they got thos orders directly from the president, right?

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. To quibble with you, when Japanese Americans were interned

the Soviet Union was an ally.

[Yavin4]

21. Point is, we imprisoned people illegaly n/t

[Phillyindy]

6. It's aggravating that those who disagree

With Maher sound as if they didnt actually watch the clip, or did that conservative listen-but-not-hearing thing.

Maher's point is dead on & pretty much indisputable. We all sacrifice certain freedoms for safety all the time, its required to maintain a civilized society, offer basic safety, and maintain basic order.

Bill's greater point was that the times HAVE CHANGED. Unlike 50 years ago (although believe me even they spied as much as technology allowed), there are chemicals and dirty bombs and portable nukes that a SINGLE person could build and detonate and kill tens of thousands of people. In a world with those threats, to some degree you simply CAN'T take a wait and see approach.

What Bill is saying is that its fine if the government wants to collect data and so on to prevent this, as long as there are STRICT rules with transparent oversight and draconian penalties (jail, etc) if anyone breaks these rules.

Now if you fear abuse, its a legit fear, but that would be we the people's fault for not holding our leaders responsible. But to just take the libertarian, utopian do-nothing and hope for the best route is both idiotic and suicidal.

[Jamaal510]

10. This was

one of the best New Rules I have ever heard from BM. He really nailed the fallacies from the absolutism in Franklin's quote. Too much of either one and too little of the other is very unhealthy for a country. With too little security and too much freedom, it would essentially be anarchy, where people can literally do whatever they want and do things like bring bombs onto planes, and lunatics can continue shooting up schools, thus killing many innocent Americans. And with it the other way around, people can have their lives ruined over very minor offenses.
All of this is what makes the balancing act of liberty and freedom so complex.

[AllINeedIsCoffee]

12. K & FUCKING R.

[WhoWoodaKnew]

13. I'd say we'll change even more when some nut uses a nuke...

or some other WMD on US soil. Can you imagine the backlash from our citizens if, at some point in the future, somebody takes out a city like Miami. Or Philly. Or NY. Or LA.

[Red Mountain]

14. The bomb reference is unfortunate....

given what other things that particular threat has been used to justify.

Personally, I'm more concerned about the biological threat.

[WhoWoodaKnew]

20. Nuke, biological weapon, something that hasn't been invented yet. It's all the same...

A whole bunch of dead people and we'd change our views on security forever.

[NoOneMan]

26. Bill compared NSA spying for safety to stopping your car at a streetlight

Sometimes he says the stupidest fuckn things. Sometimes its the opposite.