A Pilgrim’s Digression

The Wall Street Journal today has an op-ed by Debra Burlingame titled “Our Right to Security,” in which the author seeks to defend the USA Patriot Act, first by appealing to emotion (she describes one of the more horrific scenes of death from 9/11) and then by asserting that Americans have a fictitious “right” to security.

I am certainly used to Liberals finding rights where there are none explicitly provided by either God or the Constitution, but apparently Conservatives have their own erroneous list of entitlements.

Burlingame’s most egregious statement comes after describing the stomach-churning horror of a man trying to escape one of the burning Trade Center towers by lowering himself to a floor below, only to lose his grip and fall to his death. Burlingame writes, “It is an insult to those who died to tell the American people that the organization posing the greatest threat to their liberty is not al Qaeda but the FBI.”

This is pretty much exactly what I have been asserting for the past few months, if not longer, so to call it an “insult to those who died” is, again, to inject further emotion into what is really a cold matter of logic.

How can al Qaeda take away our liberty? Does Bin Laden have representatives in Congress who single-handedly push legislation that seeks to place limits on our liberty? Does al Qaeda seat advisers in the Bush Cabinet who recommend abuses of Executive power?

No one can take our liberty. But we can give it up.

Burlingame asks near the end of her piece, “Why should we allow enemies to annihilate us simply because we lack the clarity or resolve to strike a reasonable balance between a healthy skepticism of government power and the need to take proactive measures to protect ourselves from such threats?” First of all, I really don’t believe they can “annihilate” us. The Soviet Union could have annihilated us. Nazi Germany could have annihilated us, if Hitler had devoted more resources to inventing the Atomic bomb. How can a rag tag bunch of stateless thugs “annihilate” the United States?

I don’t mean to sound unduly overconfident. Certainly al Qaeda can kill a bunch of Americans, although I happen to think the death toll on 9/11 was more or less a fluke. I don’t believe al Qaeda knew about the structural composition of the Trade Center buildings, or that super heated jet fuel would essentially melt the superstructure of the buildings. However, just because they can pull off shocking and murderous acts of terrorism does not mean they can annihilate us.

Also, is there a balance to be struck between “healthy skepticism of government power” and the “need” for security? Burlingame has created a false dichotomy. Skepticism of government power and the need for a certain amount of security are not polar opposites. For example, even skeptics recognize the need for government to provide law enforcement as a method of maintaining order. For Libertarians and other “anti-government paranoids,” as Burlingame calls them, the point at which our paranoia overtakes us is the point at which the government’s terrorism prevention measures seem more frightening than the terrorism itself.  Inasmuch as the Iraq War has been one incredible terrorism prevention measure (gee, that worked well), maybe Burlingame can understand our paranoia a little better.

Life is inherently insecure. Even if we stripped away all post-9/11 security measures, I’d still be more likely to die in a car accident today than in a terrorist attack. If I flew regularly, I might feel differently; but even under old airport security, planes flew for decades without anything like 9/11 ever occurring, simply because no one–either a terrorist or a law enforcement official–ever considered that men armed only with box cutters could take control of an airplane. Until some terrorist thought of the idea, a box cutter was not a security threat.

The point is that there are security threats all around us, many of which no one has even considered. An IT person will tell you that the biggest threat to a computer network is not a virus or hacker, but the malicious, or simply careless person with legitimate access to the network. How does one defend against that, without locking everyone out of the “system?” At some point, whether or not our lives continue beyond today is simply a matter of faith and chance. And when viewed in this way, security is a chimera. Liberty may be a chimera as well, but if so I am not ready to give it up yet.

Unfortunately, Burlingame reflects the prevailing attitude of Americans on the subject of security vs. liberty. She writes at one point, “Ask the American people what they want. They will say that they want the commander in chief to use all reasonable means to catch the people who are trying to rain terror on our cities.” Her reasoning is specious, since just because the majority of people desire a thing does not make it either right or good.

Furthermore, her reasoning is dangerous because there really is no standard for what “all reasonable means” means. The President believes he and his people determine what it means, and clearly he doesn’t believe there are any limits to Presidential power in a time of war. He repeatedly says he will do whatever it takes to “protect” the American people.

I don’t believe we should let our guard down against terrorism.  Bin Laden and his associates, and anyone who seeks to pull off another of these dramatic attacks, should be hunted down and killed or captured.  On the defensive end of things, there is such a thing as being overprotective, however.  I confess I don’t know if it is still fashionable in Conservative circles to decry an overly paternalistic government, but on matters of security, at least, a Republican-controlled government can be as paternalistic as a Liberal-run government.

Although I hope that eventually people will rebel against the constant oversight of the government, I don’t know whether that hope is well-founded. On an ordinary AM talk radio program, on an ordinary day, I hear too many people say they are perfectly willing to give up privacy rights in exchange for security. Perhaps they think it is temporary. Perhaps they aren’t thinking ahead to the next government that will come to power in Washington in ‘08. Or perhaps they just don’t care.  Somehow, the latter possibility is more frightening than all the rest.