Liberties vs. security: where to draw the line?

Great Debates
1

Liberals argue that the security of the country is meaningless if concern about it turns this country it some sort of miltaristic, oppressive parody of its former self. Many also argue that the threat isn’t big enough to enact the sort of surveillance programs that the government wants, that the threat of abuse is more terrible than the threats the programs want to eliminate. (Typical reference: many threads and posts here on the SDMB - sorry for the lack of specificity, but I couldn’t find one thoroughly typical example among the mounds of it here.)

Conservatives argue that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” They see the liberal position as irresponsible, that civil liberties aren’t that useful if the country is dead. Many also believe that no laws are being broken anyway by many of the programs that liberals are concerned about, and say that the same people crying over civil liberties are the same ones complaining that the government “didn’t do enough” about 9/11 and other such incidents. (Typical reference: this commentary over the use of Geiger counters.)

Liberals say conservatives are fearmongering to gain power and distract the country while they set up Big Brother.

Conservatives say liberals would rather see thousands dead than let the FBI look at a Muslim funny.

My question is, is there ANY sort of middle ground? What is there besides “police state” and “no spying on anyone anytime anywhere”? Where does the line need to be drawn? Whichever side you land on, how would you counter the arguments of the other side (the reason why I mentioned “typical references”?)

2

Arrrgh. I didn’t notice alricthegoth had his own thread. However, I think mine is a little more neutral at the start (whether that’s good or bad is up to you), and asks something a little different (he asks whether the Administration has gone too far, while I ask what “too far” is).

So I consider this different enough to stay open. :slight_smile:

3

Those who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither liberty nor security.

Except not, really. I agree with the sentiment, but we’ve all given up at least a portion of our absolute liberty by engaging in a social contract necessary to live in proximity to eachother, which I think is appropriate.

I think we’re currently too far on the “secure” side of theline, but I have no idea where to draw it.

4

The problem, as I see it, is that this issue has become politicized

This is a bad thing. What it means in my opinion is that the criticism is not necessarily sincere but is being made for the political value of criticizing the current administration’s policy.

Conversely, sincere criticism is not recognized nor rebutted sincerely, because do so would cost political capital.

It’s a bad situation. It means that we, as the public lose.

For example, another issue that has been politicized is that of global warming and the environment. Many people involved in these issues are not seeking the truth but using their stance to further a political agenda. This has become widespread enough that it is difficult to ascertain a reasonable stance as to what is actually occuring.

When a topic becomes politicized to this degree the signal to noise ratio gets so bad that one has real difficulty ascertaining what is actually going on.

5

First, can I commend the quoted post and Scylla for writing it? That’s an amazing assessment, and I agree with it in nearly every particular.

The Franklin quote which Swashbuckler offers is one which touches me greatly. It’s also worth noting that Larry Niven wrote: F + S = k. The sum of freedom and security is a constant. We give up a little of one to get a little of the other. Finding the right balance is not always easy.

I might bring to light the late C.J. William Rehnquist’s book All the Laws but One, which dealt with a great deal of Constitutional law, but one premise, and the book’s title, derive from the situation when Lincoln arbitrarily suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus in one non-fighting area during the Civil War. The subject of an ex parte case after the war, it was found that he acted illegally but that Congress ratifying his actions legitimized them. Rehnquist’s point, though, was that it was a situation in which the denial of one right functioned to preserve the entire gamut of rights in a rather dire situation.

I refuse to be panicked into a wholesale surrender of rights, and will vote, and if possible campaign, against any representative that decides they are not worth preserving. But there may be times when the importance of preserving a given single right needs to be weighed against the importance of preserving the entire rights-guaranteeing system. It takes a discerning eye to distinguish the very pale and very dark shades of grey that exist in what at first seems a black-and-white case.

6

Scylla has gotten level headed.

Very good.

7

This should be nothing new. I have been arguing against insincere and hyperbolous criticism for quite some time, you’ll recall.

8

Yet you don’t say a thing about the Administration’s politicization of essentially everything.

As John J. Di’Iulio Jr. noted after his stint as director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the White House, in his eight months there, he was privy to lots of discussions of the politics of many issues, but he was hard-pressed to remember even two conversations about substantive policy.

So you’re starting off with a bias: the Administration’s critics are criticizing Bush solely for political reasons, but the Administration’s actions, to you, are apparently neutral.

Needless to say, this is bullshit. People here and elsewhere have written detailed policy critiques of many things this Administration has done. We may not like Bush, but (a) the arguments are either good or they’re not; and (b) there’s a reason many of us have come to dislike Bush.

Or could it be, as even insiders have noted, that this President, and this Administration, just plain don’t like criticism, and are extremely unwilling to admit they’re wrong about anything?

You’re seeing difficulties that only a biased person could see. The Arctic icecap is really melting. Polar bears really are drowning in long swims between land and icecap where they never did before. The glaciers in Glacier National Park really are shrinking and disappearing. Growing seasons really are growing longer, and the geographical ranges where certain animals and plants can thrive are working their way northward.

The fucking globe is fucking warming.

There’s a substantive debate out there concerning the appropriateness of the Kyoto accords as a response. But it IS a response. This Administration, despite giving lip-service to the threat, essentially doesn’t have one, and hasn’t proposed anything meaningful.

That much really isn’t that hard to sort out, just like it’s pretty easy to line up a solid list of specifics on which this Administration deceived the American people in the run-up to war.

If you’re trying to be ‘neutral’, Scylla what’s your ‘neutral’ test for determining whether one party to a discussion is acting in bad faith? Twisting everything for political purposes? Outright lying?

Neutrality doesn’t consist of taking both sides at their word, or not believing either side. It consists of honest evaluation of both sides’ arguments. And if one side is consistently dishonest with its arguments, an honest neutrality requires taking notice of this.

9

Dittos to RTFirefly. The idea that any opposition to Bush is by definition insincere and politically motivated is, I think, off target. The premise is a false dichotomy- where is it written that one cannot have security and liberty? There was a process in place to gather the information that Bush sought, he just chose to ignore the process. The issue isn’t where to draw the line, it’s that Bush chose to erase the line.

10

Gotta disagree with you both there, boys. I see Scylla’s post as pointing the politicization finger at all people on all sides. And God knows that’s true.

Hell, even the OP draws a ‘liberals hate it’ and ‘conservatives want it’ theme when in truth the response, both on the hill and in the country is far more varied. Arch conservatives in the ‘freedom and distrust of government’ mold hate the administrations violations of civil rights while some arch-liberals see it as a necessary expansion of powers during a time of crisis.

This is a weird one that cuts across party lines. To treat it otherwise is to simplify the issue to nothingness.

11

Gotta return the disagreement, JC, much as I hate to disagree with both you and Polycarp in one thread.

Scylla pointed at the Administration’s unwillingness to respond sincerely to insincere (dishonest?) politically motivated criticism. That framing of the issue tells a story of who started it, and who was simply put in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ position. And it completely excludes the reality that, prior to any outside reaction, it’s the Administration that has the ball, and chooses to lie and hide the truth about everything from the reasons we got into war, to what the Medicare drug benefit would cost.

Hell, here’s one from just yesterday:

Yeah, like the Administration couldn’t have gotten FISA warrants to monitor calls between people in America and people abroad “who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings, and churches.”

Maybe what Duffy’s saying is true, but then their other claims - like that FISA was too cumbersome - collapse.

This Administration hides the truth, and then thumbs its nose at it when it’s uncovered. Any discussion of the problems inherent in American political discourse today really has to start there.

Yes, most of the prominent Administration critics are partisan. But a number of them - like DiIulio, like Paul O’Neill, like Lawrence Wilkerson, like Bob Barr, like Gen. Anthony Zinni - are, if anything, partisan Republicans. At any rate, it doesn’t matter: are the criticisms valid? That’s the sort of thing this board trains a person to figure out, if one hasn’t managed it already.

And the reality is that occasionally we Administration critics get one wrong. But we’re right about all the big things. We were lied into Iraq; it’s been a blow against ourselves in the War on Terror; the now-endless postwar phase was the real game, and they didn’t have a plan to deal with it; they sent a bunch of kids over there to man the CPA who had strong partisan credentials but no relevant experience; it put a combination of conservative economic theories and political payback ahead of rebuilding the country; at home, Bush’s policies have made the economic pie bigger, but the slices going to average Americans have gotten smaller; he’s lied to us about the Medicare drug benefit; he lied to us about Social Security deform in whole bunches of ways; he lied to us when he said he’d fire anyone who was involved with leaking a certain CIA operative’s name, and hasn’t done a damned thing to find and punish the perpetrators within his administration himself; the list goes on and on.

Sure, the Administration critics may be partisan, but they really don’t have to exaggerate or make shit up, because the truth is bad enough.

12

Before we even get to the question of where to draw the line of the OP’s query, I’d submit that the proper first steps would be to do whatever else can reasonably be done to make America more secure from terrorist attacks.

And the list of things that haven’t seen a whole lot of action, four years after 9/11, is long. We haven’t done much, if anything, to speed up the process of securing loose nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. We haven’t gotten chemical plants to increase security.

Ditto nuclear plants. We’re not inspecting air cargo in the manner we inspect passenger luggage. We’re only inspecting a small fraction of the shipping containers shipped into this country. We’re not thinking about how to protect our cities from attacks on (or accidents involving) trains carrying toxic chemicals right through the middle of those cities.

Sorry, no link: it’s behind the WaPo firewall, and I’m getting there through my local library’s database access.

But spying on the American people ought to be a last resort: once we’ve done everything else within reason to protect ourselves from a threat, then the question of where the line should be drawn can legitimately be raised. But it’s not a valid question while we’re continuing to twiddle our thumbs about doing the basics, four years after “9/11 changed everything.”

13

Indeed. Recall during the campaign, John Kerry listed many things that we should be protecting but are not- water plants, chemical plants, ports, etc. The administration ignores these obvious steps it could take to improve security but instead wants us to believe that only warrantless spying on US citizens will save the republic.

14

I also agree with RT completely. If the administration had pursued policies that could meaningfully improve our security without compromising the process by which our civil liberties are sustained, I suspect that the debate would not be so acrimonious. Rather than spy without warrants on people deemed “bad” extralegally, the least the government could do is ensure that emergency response systems are properly integrated.

15

I’m not sure ad-hoc partisan attacks against the Bush administration have anything to do with the OP. Count me among those who don’t see Scylla pointing fingers at those who criticise the admininistration, I think he (she?) is pointing fingers at everyone. And accurately, as both parties certainly have politicised this issue along with many others.

And the OP asks a valid question that doesn’t have anything to do with which party is currently in power. Where should we draw the line? How much security are we willing to give up in the name of liberty, or vice versa? I hadn’t heard of that little equation by Niven before this, but it’s absolutely accurate.

In my ideal world, my right to swing my fist wherever I want stops where your nose starts. My right to play my stereo as loud as I want stops where your right to get a good nights sleep starts. My right to the fruits of my labor and my right to do whatever I want when it doesn’t affect others should be guaranteed. That line can be adjusted as individuals prove need to infringe the rights of others.

I think near-absolute liberty should be assumed for all, until any individual or government entity can show a definitive need for the right to infringe.

16

Of course it matters which party is currently in power. Fingerpointing at everyone is an attempt to obfuscate the fact that one party has the wherewithal to effect change in all houses of government and has doggedly failed to improve our security in at least those areas that require no compromise of liberty.

17

Perhaps the OP could clarify? Because I read the matter up for debate as …

… which has nothing to do with fingerpointing at any parties currently in or out of power. There are plenty of other debate threads in GD and the Pit specifically addressing what the current/previous PTB have or haven’t done regarding national security… whats wrong with leaving this thread in the abstract so that we can address the OP’s question?

I’m done contributing to this hijack now, sorry.

18

Polycarp notes “that Larry Niven wrote: F + S = k. The sum of freedom and security is a constant” and this is very untrue. There are actions which increase security significantly with little impact on freedoms, and actions that limit freedoms significantly with little impact on security. Examples of each have already been given. Security precautions at chemical plants and water treatment facilities impact freedom little yet provide significant security improvements. Allowing an executive branch to unilaterally decide who is an enemy and to wiretap in an unfettered manner provides little additional security over legal wiretaps with court supervision but allows for great potential abuse of all of our freedoms.

Freedoms should be infringed only when such infringements both provide for significant societal needs and when less invasive alternatives are unavailable.

19

It is hardly a hijack. The very idea that we have to trade off liberty and security assumes that we are already on the efficient frontier, as it were, of security provision. I believe we can do a great deal more to improve our domestic security before we even have to draw a line at all.

20

Sorry, but this is a bit of a pet peeve. Ben Franklin never said this. What he said was (emphasis added), “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” (Cite.)

The actual quote concedes that liberty may reasonably be given up for security in some circumstances. And it implies that people should weigh the liberty given up against the security gained. So the actual quote is quite different from the revised quote often brought out against the latest security measures.

Having said that, I’m not in favor of deciding policy by platitude. So just because Ben Franklin said something clever doesn’t mean that we should make it law.

And for the record, many of the posts in this thread are examples of what Scylla was talking about. For example, RT responds to Scylla’s assertion that both sides are politicizing the issue with the following quote:

Note the knee jerk reaction to a post that didn’t defend the Bush administration. Note the hyperbolic statement that the Bush administration politicizes essentially everything. Note the attempt to focus the blame on a political adversary by arguing “they do it more.” Note the attempt to focus solely on the opposition’s faults, without acknowledging their own faults. Now we’re politicizing the issue of politicizing issues.

So the reason the debate is so acrimonious is because Bush’s actions were horrible. And how can you expect people to remain level-headed in their criticisms when they disagree with their political opposition?

The administration never said that “only warrantless spying on US citizens will save the republic.” Nor is there any indication that the administration believes this.

One more example of the noise to fact ratio:
Ted Kennedy wrote an op-ed in the Boston Post arguing that Bush was running roughshod over the Constitution. In that article, Kennedy wrote about a university student who claimed to have been interviewed by Homeland Security after requesting Mao’s Little Red Book from the university library. Turns out the student lied; he made the whole thing up. However, Senator Kennedy’s spokesperson said that whether Senator Kennedy’s assertions were true was less important than raising awareness of Bush’s misdeeds. (Cite.)