The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
The Ben Franklin quote is ridiculous on its face. Try going without an army or a police force, without laws of any sort, and see how far you get.
Too many quotes are ripped out of context, oversimplified, and twisted. With a little spin, they can be used to support almost any point of view. The holy scriptures of various faiths offer countless examples across the ages. Laws, like game rules, come with loopholes, and the more complicated the rules, the more numerous and more devastating the exploits.
There's an underlying truth to Franklin's quote, though, and that is that it is immensely more costly and more difficult to loosen the reins that bind us than it is to tighten them. Anybody who fails to grasp, in full measure, the essential truth of this core principle has failed as a student of American history. With that in mind, one should be (indeed MUST be) cautious in all decisions to be made about the writing of new law.
Unfortunately, the people who most often wave Ben's quote around in peoples' noses like a flag of rebuke against anybody who holds security concerns are missing the point on a colossal scale.
ALL LAW aims to trade liberty for security. Yet a nation that started out with legislators trekking to the capital a few weeks out of each year now has full time legislators backed by large staffs and a bloated budget fueled by our grand economy, piling the complications on us so thickly we can hardly breathe!
I sometimes wonder if hypocrisy is the biggest industry in America. Then I look around the rest of the world and realize that there aren't any greener pastures out there, either. ... It's human nature to know only as much as you have been able to gather in your lifetime, and for all of us, that will forever be a paltry pittance compared to what there is that could be known. A little forgiveness can go a long way.
The Franklin quote is best expressed through action.
When the same folks who cry about tax laws and gun laws want to impose abortion laws and concoct industrial subsidies to benefit their development buddies, and the same folks who cry about defense budgets and labor rights want to build massive bureaucracies and confiscate private property for use by their development buddies -- and both sides are convinced that the other is the sworn enemy of the American way -- you know that you have crossed over in to the Twilight Zone.
The US Consitition is a sleek and simple document. Yet we require a three-tiered Federal Court system to apply it to the rest of our body of law, to protect and preserve it, to keep it alive. The sad fact is that rights clash. One person's right to smoke clashes with another's right not to inhale poisons. One person's right to speak freely clashes with another's right not to be sexually harassed at work. One person's right to own a house and be the sole determinant of what takes place on their property clashes with the rights of other homeowners not to be awakened at 3AM by a loud party. Thus we need judges to apply our principles case by case and determine whose rights trump whose rights -- to judge, to rule, to make the tough calls. Even simple and clear rules have some exceptions. Then we write more laws, trying to cover the special cases, piling on more and more rules, selling off more and more freedoms.
Trade a little liberty for a little security?
Are you kidding me?!? 
We as a nation have done NOTHING ELSE for two hundred years on end!
Who is going to pull up Ben's quote and wave it around as if it holds any support for their modern day political leanings? ... Give me a break.
Because guess what? Too little law constricts and destroys freedom! Fail to contain the criminal element and nobody can maintain a business. The liberty to operate a business depends on a reasonable degree of security for that business. Security and Liberty are cross-hatched principles. They rely upon one another, arise from one another, build upon each other.
For all our piled up laws, requiring lawyers en masse to wade through even simple legal matters, on the whole we are making progress. The right laws increase both liberty and security, but it is a balancing act. Tilt too far in either direction and the costs outweigh the benefits.
In the end, there are no simple answers. Platitudes like Ben's quote are the beginning of wisdom, not its end. Everything worth obtaining, including an improved synergy between liberty and security, requires commitment, careful thought, and balance.
What I just wrote is a political statement.
Civ4 is not a political statement. It's a game. The two things are very different. ... OK?
- Sirian
