"One of the things that bothers me most is the growing belief in the country that security is more important than freedom. It ain't"
About this Quote
The sting is in the last two words: "It ain't". Lyn Nofziger doesn’t argue so much as slam the table. After a tidy, almost bureaucratic setup about "the growing belief in the country", he ends with a blunt vernacular refusal that treats the tradeoff as not just wrong, but faintly ridiculous. The line works because it refuses the soothing language politicians use when they’re about to ask for new powers. No balancing test, no "hard choices", no technocratic shrug. Just a hard no.
The specific intent is warning and shaming at once. Nofziger is pushing back on the post-crisis reflex that recasts rights as luxuries and surveillance as adulthood. His phrasing also frames the problem as contagious: a "growing belief" suggests something that spreads socially until it becomes common sense. That’s the real target - not a single policy, but the cultural permission structure that lets policies happen.
The subtext is that "security" is an elastic word, often defined by the very institutions that benefit from expanding it. "Freedom", by contrast, is costly, messy, and distributed; it can’t be centralized without ceasing to be itself. The quote’s little bit of swagger implies a deeper suspicion: once you accept the premise that freedom must constantly justify itself to security, you’ve already started losing it.
Contextually, Nofziger’s lifetime spans the Cold War, Vietnam, and the long American habit of enlarging state power in the name of safety. The line reads like someone who has watched the ratchet turn and knows it rarely clicks back.
The specific intent is warning and shaming at once. Nofziger is pushing back on the post-crisis reflex that recasts rights as luxuries and surveillance as adulthood. His phrasing also frames the problem as contagious: a "growing belief" suggests something that spreads socially until it becomes common sense. That’s the real target - not a single policy, but the cultural permission structure that lets policies happen.
The subtext is that "security" is an elastic word, often defined by the very institutions that benefit from expanding it. "Freedom", by contrast, is costly, messy, and distributed; it can’t be centralized without ceasing to be itself. The quote’s little bit of swagger implies a deeper suspicion: once you accept the premise that freedom must constantly justify itself to security, you’ve already started losing it.
Contextually, Nofziger’s lifetime spans the Cold War, Vietnam, and the long American habit of enlarging state power in the name of safety. The line reads like someone who has watched the ratchet turn and knows it rarely clicks back.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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