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Freedom is a good idea, despite threats to safety
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Freedom is a good idea, despite threats to safety
The Virginian-Pilot
c June 14, 2002
When Americans thought of freedom prior to Sept. 11, we often thought in terms of freedom from big government. Our government could and even should spy on the rest of the world, but not on us. When Virginia Beach police infiltrated a harmless citizens' group opposed to confining dolphins to a tank, it gave many people the creeps.
When we think of freedom today, in the wake of 9/11, we tend to think in terms of freedom from being blown to bits by terrorists, freedom to move around safely. The last thing we want is a government too weak and inattentive to protect us.
It seems that the FBI will be spying on churches, synagogues and mosques, if it chooses, all in the name of our new god, homeland security. It's a new day.
A smaller government, such as we're used to, could catch and punish criminals. But now the federal government is charged with foreseeing and preventing terrorist acts. Staying one step ahead is a far more demanding and expensive task than following one step behind.
To foresee and prevent all terrorists' acts, of course, the government would have to know everything about everybody, all the time. It would have to be omniscient.
That's just what we used to fear: an omniscient central government, one with powerful central computers that knew our secrets. Post-9/11, the fear is that the government doesn't know enough, that it needs better computers.
While recently reading a piece by one economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, about another, the infamous Karl Marx, my initial reaction to a British government statement startled me, because my reaction was so different from what it would have been prior to 9/11.
Some quick background: After Marx got booted from continental Europe in the mid-19th century for publishing subversive thoughts, he settled with his family in a London flat (until he could afford a house in a new real estate development in the 'burbs).
In 1850, the Austrian ambassador protested to the British government that Marx and his fellow members of the Communist League were debating the pros and cons of regicide.
The British government replied to the ambassador:
``. . . Under our laws, mere discussion of regicide, so long as it does not concern the Queen of England and so long as there is no definite plan, does not constitute sufficient grounds for the arrest of the conspirators.''
Those words would not have jumped out at me if I'd read them before Sept. 11. They would have just seemed sensible. No harm, no foul.
But when I read those words this week, my first thought, to my surprise, was, ``Isn't waiting to act till something happens risky?''
Then I wondered what our present government would do in a similar situation -- presumably infiltrate or raid.
Being free, however, is supposed to mean being free to say smart or dumb things, good or bad things, right? If you don't break the law, you can say almost anything, right? If you're not hurting anyone else, the government shouldn't even be paying attention, right?
Except how can the government know whether you're up to something bad unless it is listening? Today, with homeland security at stake, it just might listen.
The Austrian ambassador's alarmed letter and the British government's unconcerned response were written, of course, long before the communist revolution in Russia, decades before communism was a clear threat to democracy and capitalism.
For whatever it's worth, Marx supported many ideas that deserved discussion and that were later adopted in this country, including a progressive income tax, better soil management, free education and abolition of child labor.
As I've written before, our nation did not attain greatness in spite of its citizens' being free; it attained greatness because its citizens were free. Free to discuss and adopt good ideas, such as abolition of child labor; free to discuss and discard bad ones, such as ending private ownership of property.
Even as the best deals are arrived at through free trade, the best ideas are arrived at through free discussion -- as opposed to conversations conducted in fear that someone is listening in.
Today, if we let the federal agents charged with foreseeing and preventing terrorist acts determine how free we should or shouldn't be, I fear that we will be a lot less free than people used to be, and the nation will suffer for it.
Osama bin Laden didn't just attack our buildings; he attacked our freedoms. The latter attack might be the bigger blow.
After 9/11, we need to at least try to remember that freedom's a good idea, even when we're told that we cannot safely be free.
The truth is, we cannot safely be not free.
Patrick Lackey is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. E-mail him at plackey@pilotonline.com.
http://www.pilotonline.com/opinion/op0614lac.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
The Virginian-Pilot
c June 14, 2002
When Americans thought of freedom prior to Sept. 11, we often thought in terms of freedom from big government. Our government could and even should spy on the rest of the world, but not on us. When Virginia Beach police infiltrated a harmless citizens' group opposed to confining dolphins to a tank, it gave many people the creeps.
When we think of freedom today, in the wake of 9/11, we tend to think in terms of freedom from being blown to bits by terrorists, freedom to move around safely. The last thing we want is a government too weak and inattentive to protect us.
It seems that the FBI will be spying on churches, synagogues and mosques, if it chooses, all in the name of our new god, homeland security. It's a new day.
A smaller government, such as we're used to, could catch and punish criminals. But now the federal government is charged with foreseeing and preventing terrorist acts. Staying one step ahead is a far more demanding and expensive task than following one step behind.
To foresee and prevent all terrorists' acts, of course, the government would have to know everything about everybody, all the time. It would have to be omniscient.
That's just what we used to fear: an omniscient central government, one with powerful central computers that knew our secrets. Post-9/11, the fear is that the government doesn't know enough, that it needs better computers.
While recently reading a piece by one economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, about another, the infamous Karl Marx, my initial reaction to a British government statement startled me, because my reaction was so different from what it would have been prior to 9/11.
Some quick background: After Marx got booted from continental Europe in the mid-19th century for publishing subversive thoughts, he settled with his family in a London flat (until he could afford a house in a new real estate development in the 'burbs).
In 1850, the Austrian ambassador protested to the British government that Marx and his fellow members of the Communist League were debating the pros and cons of regicide.
The British government replied to the ambassador:
``. . . Under our laws, mere discussion of regicide, so long as it does not concern the Queen of England and so long as there is no definite plan, does not constitute sufficient grounds for the arrest of the conspirators.''
Those words would not have jumped out at me if I'd read them before Sept. 11. They would have just seemed sensible. No harm, no foul.
But when I read those words this week, my first thought, to my surprise, was, ``Isn't waiting to act till something happens risky?''
Then I wondered what our present government would do in a similar situation -- presumably infiltrate or raid.
Being free, however, is supposed to mean being free to say smart or dumb things, good or bad things, right? If you don't break the law, you can say almost anything, right? If you're not hurting anyone else, the government shouldn't even be paying attention, right?
Except how can the government know whether you're up to something bad unless it is listening? Today, with homeland security at stake, it just might listen.
The Austrian ambassador's alarmed letter and the British government's unconcerned response were written, of course, long before the communist revolution in Russia, decades before communism was a clear threat to democracy and capitalism.
For whatever it's worth, Marx supported many ideas that deserved discussion and that were later adopted in this country, including a progressive income tax, better soil management, free education and abolition of child labor.
As I've written before, our nation did not attain greatness in spite of its citizens' being free; it attained greatness because its citizens were free. Free to discuss and adopt good ideas, such as abolition of child labor; free to discuss and discard bad ones, such as ending private ownership of property.
Even as the best deals are arrived at through free trade, the best ideas are arrived at through free discussion -- as opposed to conversations conducted in fear that someone is listening in.
Today, if we let the federal agents charged with foreseeing and preventing terrorist acts determine how free we should or shouldn't be, I fear that we will be a lot less free than people used to be, and the nation will suffer for it.
Osama bin Laden didn't just attack our buildings; he attacked our freedoms. The latter attack might be the bigger blow.
After 9/11, we need to at least try to remember that freedom's a good idea, even when we're told that we cannot safely be free.
The truth is, we cannot safely be not free.
Patrick Lackey is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. E-mail him at plackey@pilotonline.com.
http://www.pilotonline.com/opinion/op0614lac.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878