Benjamin Franklin, Terrorist Lover

by Will Grigg
Nov. 14, 2013

According to Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, Benjamin Franklin was an irresponsible extremist for placing a higher value on liberty than security.

In an interview with NewsMax, Dershowitz declared:

“Benjamin Franklin was wrong when he said those who give up any privacy or rights in the name of security deserved neither. That’s nonsense. That’s hyperbole. That’s extremism.”

Actually, the perspective Dershowitz finds so objectionable is Americanism, something both incomprehensible and offensive to him. Professor Dershowitz accuses those who share Franklin’s perspective of being “extreme radicals who hate America and love terrorism” – a charge that, presumably, would make defending the Bill of Rights a form of seditious treason.

Over the past several years, Dershowitz has promoted a doctrine called “pre-emption” in which the government can do pretty much anything it pleases in the name of fighting an open-ended war against an amorphous enemy. He has loudly supported the practice of torture, which he wants to institutionalize, and expounded a doctrine of collective guilt in which the population of any nation targeted by the U.S. or Israel is considered combatants unless they actively oppose their country’s government.

It would be comforting to think that Professor Dershowitz is an anomaly, but his deranged views are very much in line with official policy.