John at Americablog summarizes the basic cowardice in such a statement:
. . . Patrick Henry once said: 'Give me liberty or give me death.' Pat Roberts said yesterday: Take my liberty and spare me death. You see, among the far-right wingers now running the Republican party, the concept of actually fighting FOR your freedoms, of actually DYING in the DEFENSE of those freedoms, is nuts . . . They don't understand our freedoms, let alone appreciate what it means to be willing to give your life to protect and preserve them. They have no concept that some things really ARE worth dying for. And that's a very scary thing indeed. . .Emphasis mine.
And Matthew Yglesias at Talking Points Memo writes about how insulting Robert's statement is to Americans:
First off is the sheer cowardice of it. Sure, liberal democracy is nice, but not if someone might get hurt....Second is just this dogmatic post-9/ll insistence on acting as if human history began suddenly in 1997 or something. The United States was able to face down such threats as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany without indefinite detentions, widespread use of torture as an interrogative technique, or an all-pervasive surveillance. But a smallish group of terrorists who can't even surface publicaly abroad for fear they'll be swiftly killed by the mightiest military on earth? Time to break out the document shredder and do away with that pesky constitution. Last, there's the unargued assumption that civil rights and the rule of law are some kind of near-intolerable impediment to national security . . .Emphasis mine, again.
What is wrong with these people? Don't they realize what they're giving up? They have forgotten these words supposedly said by Benjamin Franklin two centuries ago"Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither".
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