Giving up Liberty For Security

Great Debates
21

I guess that what I would say is that many many people since the founding of this country have thought that these freedoms were important enough to die for and many still do to this day. I would further add that I trust the jokers in charge (and this in not partisan by the way) not one bit to not misuse any power that we turn over to them.

It may be that the old saying is true that the tree of liberty must be watered with blood on occasion and that if we want to live free that means that some people have to die. I don’t know. I do know that if we willingly allow this country to become a police state in the name of safety that we will have lost something very precious.

22

No, of course you know I don’t believe that. I just like to think that they wouldn’t violate my privacy or my home unless they had a real good reason to do it.

23

But when the government decides who is and isn’t suspicious, you get cases like Richard Jewell’s and the gentleman from Oregon. Remember: they broke into his house, searched all his belongings, wiretapped his phones, and more – and then discovered that he wasn’t a terrorist.

Alright, now pay attention closely. I’m going to pretend, for just a moment, that I’m actually more willing to give up my rights than you. Basically a Devil’s Advocate move. We’re both cool with the government coming in to search my house.

Now: pretend I’m actually cool with this whole subdermal tracking unit. In fact, me and my whole neighborhood are cool with it. And you happen to live here. We had a referendum, and it passed, and now everyone in the city – even you, who voted against it – is getting an implant. Worse yet! Because you voted against it, the government has concluded that “you must have something to hide,” and have placed your implant on a “watch list”. Every time you come home, lights are on that you know were turned off. One night, you get home, and a mix CD a friend burned for you (which you know was in your CD player) is gone. Every so often, you notice a black van parked across the street. Whenever you step onto your porch to get a better look at them, two men get in and drive it away.

But at least you’re safe from those terrorists, and don’t have to live in fear.

Now, I know it’s an exaggeration, and something of a straw man argument. But you said “in any way possible,” which is my point. The fear that you would feel on any given day living in my scenario above is the same fear that I would feel living in the “completely safe” scenario you seem to want. I don’t mind you giving up your rights, but it scares the hell out of me when you ask the government to take away our rights so that you can feel safer.

Am I making sense to you? If not, I really want to find a common ground here. I am a civil libertarian, and I really feel a duty to explain my views to those who would exchange liberty for security.

24

Jurph, I definitely see what you’re saying. I think my point is, that if we follow what some others are saying, where we’d rather die in a terrorist attack than let the government search our homes, or requiring tons of bureacracy to do so, then we’re DEFINITELY not going to be safe. There are two extremes that I’m seeing.

Binary says that if we become a police state we’ve lost something precious.

I agree. But if we get nuked to oblivion by a terrorist group, we’ve also lost something precious…our lives.

I don’t know what the middle ground is.

25

Luckily, our form of government was created with checks and balances so that it tends to seek the proper “middle ground” for the situation we’re in. But the only way to ensure that it continues to do so is for the populace to ardently demand our rights. The legislature, in my experience, tends to pass laws removing rights rather than granting new ones. And the Supreme Court takes a long time to set things back in line with the Constitution sometimes. And the only way the Supreme Court ever hears a case is if the plaintiff appeals that his rights have been violated and that the law he was arrested under was unconstitutional.

Go back and review your 20th century history and look at what happened to people arrested during McCarthyism, just for suspicion of being a communist. There were any number of harmless behaviors that could lead to one being labelled Communist – atheism, homosexuality, or even disagreeing with McCarthy! Having seen all that, I don’t trust the government to make that kind of decision for me.

By the way, the USA PATRIOT Act gives the government to do all the things I outlined in my (super scary) scenario above with no judicial oversight whatsoever – except for the skin implant. Right now, if they suspect you, they can enter your home, search through your belongings, and detain you indefinitely without arresting you – even if you’re a US Citizen! – and you can’t say boo. Well you can, but nobody will hear you.

“Wait,” you say, “if I didn’t have the skin implant, then how did they get my name then?”

And I say, “however they felt like it.” Feel safe yet?

26

I didn’t think you did, but you do see the similarity, right? I also happen to think that in most cases, they would wait until they had a good reason. I’m just not willing to trust that every single person in law enforcement will meet that standard. Hell, we know they won’t. Even before the Patriot Act, cops would abuse search & seizure. The difference is that it was illegal and a court would usually slap them on the hand and take away the evidence.

I honestly don’t think there is one. We either keep the freedoms we have and law enforcement has to work around that, or we give them up slowly, but surely.

27

Then how do we prevent further terrorism?

28

jarbabyj, I’m not a tinfoil-hat wearer, nor a member of any right- or left-wing militia, but my trust in the government is definitely less than yours. At various times over the last, say, 65 years, our government has persecuted, surveilled and/or prosecuted people who were:[ul][li]Pro-war (i.e., in favor of entering WWII too early, as that might indicate Communist sympathies)[/li][li]Anti-war (Vietnam, in particular)[/li][li]In favor of civil rights for blacks[/li][li]“Enemies” of the sitting president (Nixon’s infamous list)[/li][li]Of Japanese ancestry (of the 120,000 interned, more than 2/3rds were American citizens)[/ul]The government is made up of people. Those people are capable of being petty, vindictive, mistaken, or even out-and-out evil, just like anybody else. Our system has a pretty amazing set of balances that usually keeps any serious and systematic abuses from happening, or for going on too long when they do happen. Giving the government a blank check to do “whatever it takes” to meet the present danger just sets a precedent for a future bad president, FBI director or LEO with delusions of grandeur to put you or me on a list of “persons of interest.”[/li]
And, of course, by taking too long to compose I see the conversation has moved on. Just to respond to a later point; if the choice is between living in a police state and a measurable danger of a terrorist nuke going off somewhere in the country, I’ll take my chances with the nuke. Police states of both the left and right wing varieties have killed orders of magnitudes more people than a terrorist nuke could.

29

You can’t stop all terrorism. You will never be completely safe until you’re dead. Once you accept that fact – that living on a planet populated with other human beings is inherently risky – then you’ll realize why my answer makes sense:

“The same way we always have.”

We stopped some - but not all - terrorist attacks before September 11th; we didn’t need the USA PATRIOT Act to do it. We’ll stop some - but not all - terrorist attacks planned in the next ten years – with or without the USA PATRIOT Act. If the state of the world were nicer (e.g. a peaceful Middle East, an equitable standard of living in the third world) then there might be less terrorism, because there would certainly be fewer people with grievances against us who were pushed so far that they felt suicide was the only answer.

So perhaps if we crafted sensible and just foreign policies, we would have less terrorism to stop. How’s that sound?

30

We do the best we can within the framework of the laws we have. We need to focus on the things we can do (better control of ports, more stringent inspection of cargo, better communication of information, increase information gathering resources overseas). Sorry if that answer sounds trite.

Ultimately though, we have to recognize that there is no foolproof way to completely prevent terrorist attacks and understand that minor incremental improvements in safety are not worth the sacrifice of freedoms that prevent greater injustice.

31

Personally, I wish we could give up something like, say, Brussell sprouts for security. That’s the world I wanna live in.

32

Well, how likely IS being killed or hit by a terrorist attack? We’re more likely to be raped, robbed or murdered, in a car accident, etc.

Yet should we beef up our security for that?

33

Oh no pal. If loving brussels sprouts is wrong, jar don’t wanna be right.

I appreciate all the insights of this thread. Let me ask a follow up question which may go a little deeper into the meaning of the quote by…Franklin is it? Why is it that those of us who WOULD give up liberty for security (however small that minority is, let’s say there’s 12 people willing to have brain implants to be followed) why is it that those people don’t DESERVE security? Because their views are different or more extreme than the majority?

34

Let me throw this into the mix…

When you say ‘suspicious person’ do you mean only those identified as being such?

Because the ones you need to fear are the ones that aren’t suspected. And the only way for the government to be SURE is to search everything and everybody. Who would have searched Timothy McVeigh? Or David Berkowitz. Or John Wayne Gacy. Or Jeffery Dahmer.

The point is that until they committed their crimes no one gave them a second thought. They weren’t ‘suspicious’. Therefore a selective search of ‘suspicious persons’ wouldn’t have prevented their crimes.

The only way to be even remotely sure (and I don’t even think increased security at airports is going to work) is to make searches involuntary and rather frequent. A person contemplating a terrorist (or criminal) act must KNOW in his or her heart, that he will be subject to enough searches during the planning and commission of the crime that it would be impossible to succeed.

And that’s just wrong. It removes choice and doesn’t bring in security.

35

Brussels sprouts…yummmmmm…

I’ve always seen the quote as “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security” (emphasis added).

To me, it’s a warning that once you give up a liberty, it’s hard to get back and that it’s shortsighted and a little naive to expect life to be that easy. You also have to keep in mind that at the time he said it, liberty was something you fought for and that tyranny was the rule rather than the exception (hence those who are willing to give up liberty don’t deserve it). It was also a society that had been through so rough times at the hands of those supposedly in charge of security and that giving someone your liberty for security puts them in a position to do you harm without any real deterrent.

All of the above IMHO, YMMV.

36

In my town there’s only been one terrorist attack of significant scope within memory, and that was almost three years ago. There was a minor incident at the same site back more than a decade ago. Nationwide, there was that Murrah Building thingie in Oklahoma and the attack on the Pentagon that was concurrent with the first one here that I mentioned, and I guess Boston if you consider that that was where the planes took off from.

What’s to worry about?

Now if we had an enemy that was destroying one Manhattan office building per month, killing a good portion of its occupants more often than not, that would concern me a lot more. But we’ve got a pretty peaceful, safe society. Now, not in some hypothetical future when we’ve eliminated terrorism.

I don’t mind if they scan me going into the boarding queue at the airport if they can do it without slowing me down and inconveniencing me and if they are prohibited from using any information they obtain for any purpose other than ensuring the safety of the plane and its passengers.

Beyond that, no. I’m more likely to die of being hit by an out-of-control car or electrocuted by bad household wiring than killed by terrorists.

37

You aren’t being clear in what you’re proposing here.

If what you mean is that those twelve people want implants in their heads, they certainly DO deserve to have implants put in their heads if they can find someone willing to stick 'em in there. You can jam anything into your head you want. It’s your melon. Who is telling you you can’t do that?

But if what you mean is that those twelve people want EVERYONE to have an implant stuck in their head, then no, they do not deserve that. Your desire for security does not trump my right to liberty, for a very simple reason:

In the long run it simply does not work. You can’t have unlimited government power to enforce security without turning the United States, or any other country, into a hellish shithole. The people who wrote the Bill of Rights were not stupid; they didn’t come up with those ideas just for the hell of it. It was their direct observation that unlimited government power to enforce security resulted in far more bad than good and tended to increase security not at all. Was the Soviet Union a fun place to live?

Why it doesn’t work can be the subject of 50 threads, but in short:

  1. Taking away people’s liberty tends to be based on the fad of the moment and often has nothing to do with reality. You live in a country where the number of American who are murdered by other ordinary Americans outnumbers the number of americans murdered by terrorists by a margin of about fifty to one. Why are you so worried about terrorism, and not about ordinary murder? Where is your overriding, terrible fear of drunk drivers, who are vastly more likely to kill you than terrorists?

Or look at the drug testing craze which peaked in the 80s but continues today. Has it made life any safer? Not really. Have people been unjustly punished for incorrect tests? By the thousands. Nothing whatsoever was accomplished. Millions of dollars have been spent banning chemicals that cannot be shown to have ever harmed anyone, but you can’t get anyone to spend a few bucks upgrading level railroad crossings even though hundreds of people are killed at them every year.

Sympathetic thought I might be to your fear, fear isn’t rational and is a stupid basis for setting public policy. With all due respect, as a bit of an outsider, I can tell you that the one weakness I perceive of American soviety is that you are a remarkably fearful bunch of folks.

  1. It is inevitable that giving the government the power to override liberties in favour of security will eventually lead to them overriding liberties in favour of things other than security.

  2. The evidence suggests that heavy-handed security measures don’t work.

I will disagree with Franklin; all humans deserve security and liberty. but those who will give up liberty for security will GET neither, no matter what they deserve.

And to answer your question, how to stop terrorism? The way it’s always been done; though the criminal justice system, or the armed forces, whichever is appropriate.

38

I don’t think it is repulsive at all, so long as you’re sure that I don’t have to give the government that right. If you want to allow the police to search your house, be my guest.

I’m unfazed. Really. I worry about somebody on their cell phone sliding over half a lane and hitting me on the highway, or a mechanical failure on an airplane, more than I am of someone killing me for policy spite.

Fine. Please don’t compel me to have the government do the same. But then you won’t feel safe, will you?

39

This is an interesting insight. I haven’t been able to confirm it for all Americans, but I do know that my American relatives are, quite frankly, terrified by the events of 9/11, and the possible other terrorist acts that may (or may not) happen eventually.

There’s the key word: terrified. I recall reading somewhere once (no cites, sorry) that the purpose of terrorism is not to kill people. It is to kill a few and thus, terrify many; to make many people think that they will be killed by a terrorist act. It is this fear, perhaps, that is the real goal of terrorism–and by extension, to make people change their habits, to upset their routine, to allow them to think that the worst will happen to them personally, and to constantly mistrust, wondering if that guy over there is a terrorist.

Of course, calls to change public policy to react to the perceived threat are also expected. But somehow, I get the feeling that no matter how much “security” is put into place, a creative terrorist will still find a way to achieve his or her goal, which if we agree with the above definition, is killing a few to frighten many. Putting more security measures in place to react against a known danger–enough, say, to somehow limit one’s personal liberties that are guaranteed by law–is not solving the problem if some unthought-of-before and original terrorist act can take place. Really, whoever thought, prior to 9/11, that an aircraft would be hijacked and flown into a building?

From what I can see, all these “reactive” security measures are doing (IMHO) is setting up false expectations of safety while frightening the people–as the OP illustrates. In a roundabout way, it seems to me that the security measures, and the fearful thoughts they constantly bring to mind, are helping to ensure that the terrorists’ goal of terrorizing as many as possible is achieved.

40

Let me trot out my Invincible Soldier premise again. In essence - the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Achilles’ Heel. When you are or view yourself as invulnerable, and something manages to nick you, you have a shattering of the dellusion and panic. As I said in my IS post - the death of one soldier becomes much more significant.

Remember that scene in the second Matrix movie where Neo blocks a sword blade with his hand and you go, “cool”… then it zooms in and a drop of blood falls, and that stupid French guy says, “See? He is only human.” Well, that is what happened to the US. 9/11 wasn’t a tremendous tactical or strategic attack - but its impact was astounding. We found out that we CAN be hurt, and that sent us retreating like an elephant from a mouse (I mean this in a social collective sense, not militarily - we struck out at Afghanistan rather rapidly). It hurt us so bad we fell back into Nationalism (capital N), and told our government - do whatever you must! Anything! Just protect us!

Now that the instant of shock has passed and we are dealing with the consequences of our reaction, and we are leveling out again, things will start to reverse. Already, Congress is a bit miffed about the Patriot Act. The people are fed up with the war in Iraq. Afghanistan got swept under the rug after our primary mission there failed.