Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin

I believe a good example of this is massive citizen surveilance. It'll give you a little temporary safety for as long as it takes the criminals to notice the surveilance cams. Shortly thereafter, criminals simply find ways around the surveilance cameras, and now criminals are still criminals, but honest citizens no longer have any privacy.

The same could be said for gun control. Outlawing guns will only give you some temporary safety as long it takes for the criminals to get guns illegally. So now criminals still have guns, but you, as a citizen, have lost a very essential liberty, and have also lost a massive amount of safety in losing the ability to protect yourself with weapons to match those of the criminals.

This quote deeply has its roots in Social Contract Theory, one of the founding principles of the US. Social Contract Theory is a theory explaining the origin of government. It explains that government originated from small tribes that formed laws through mutual agreement that everyone in the tribe would have to abide by in order to assure group survival. For example, everyone would agree to not kill people. A tribesman would vote for this even though it was limiting his rights, because he knows that it also limits everyone else's rights and makes sure no one will kill him.

Sacrificing your liberties for temporary safeties defeats the whole purpose. You've now given up a right, without gaurunteeing that other people will be denied that right as long as you are. This in the long run makes you less safe, rather than more safe, because in the end you have less rights and other people have more. This endangers your life, and possibly others, completely ruining the system. Worse, these events can begin to establish precedence, making minds less resistant to them.

On the other hand, if you go strictly by this node title, then you are an anarchist. Because government is designed to do just that; remove liberties to provide security (paradoxically, the security might be insuring that you have liberty in the future).