> “Give me liberty or give me death.” It is hard to express in more definitive terms on which side of that liberty-versus-security trade-off the U.S. was intended to fall.

No, that's a gross misrepresentation of what he said and meant. Patrick Henry was referring exclusively to political liberty from British colonial rule. There is no sense whatsoever in which he was referring to civil liberties against domestic rule. It didn't have a single thing to do with "security".

> But the core premise of the West generally, and the U.S. in particular, is that those trade-offs are never worthwhile.

Also totally false. This is the core premise of libertarians in the West, who are, and always have been, a minority. It is not, and has never been, the "core premise" of the West or the US. Or else, quite obviously, we wouldn't have the constant tension between these liberties and the need for security. The idea that "those trade-offs are never worthwhile" is not a core American idea. We make those tradeoffs every single day. And continue to argue about them, e.g. over what degree of gun control is proper after each school shooting that happens.