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On a mailing list, a certain person attempted to shut off debate on what security measures were right and proper in the light of 11 September 2002 by quoting Ben Franklin, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little Too many self-proclaimed civil libertarians of the conservative and libertarian bents are, it seems to me, smugly using that Franklin quote as a presumed talisman against any change (liberals seem to want us all to forget that Franklin existed, and are hoping to attribute the origins of American liberty to John Reed). Let's look at that quote. Franklin spoke of essential liberty and temporary safety. We can debate just what he had in mind, but the terms certainly suggest that he viewed some liberty as inessential, and some safety as permanent. Indeed, the fact that he participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, anathema to many libertarians (who conveniently forget that, under the Articles of Confederation, America was not one libertarian republic, but an association of thirteen distinctly unlibertarian republics), suggests that he viewed the liberty provided by the Articles to the several states as too great for their safety. There has actually some informed debate on what liberties are and are not essential, and what inessential (in the minds of the debaters) liberties can be safely traded for safety. Far too many, though, are parroting Franklin (or Jefferson, or Reed, or Jones), leaving out that (in their views) matters were not satisfactory on 10 September 2001, but preferring to forego that in the hopes of demoting the discussion to how much praise or abuse Norman Mineta and Tom Ridge deserve, rather than raising it to level of debating essential liberty and safety (in some cases, because they hope to "fly under the radar" with unsound ideas. As I have said before, just where we're going (and therefore what liberties and safeties are viewed to be essential) depend on what kind of polity we want to have. The right hopes to return to the halcyon days before 11 September; the left wants to use the Islamofascist attacks as an excuse to loot the U.S. Neither is a realistic vision of America's future; promoting their utopias will very likely mean that the U.S. will proceed in a direction that dismays both. John "Akatsukami" Braue Sunday, June 16, 2002 |
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