Freedom vs. Fear

I'll let you figure out which is which, though it's obvious to me.

This first column from James P. Pinkerton of Newsday was reprinted in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Liberty matters, but security matters more

Could 2005 be remembered as the year mass surveillance became normal, even popular?

I smell trouble right away with an idiotic supposition like that. Does Pinkerton think we're all lemmings just waiting to let the government decide when it feels it have the right to turn our lives upside down? Maybe he does (a curious attitude for a Repug, if in fact that's what he is.)

Revelations about the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping rocked the civil liberties establishment, but the country as a whole didn't seem upset. Instead, the American people, mindful of the possible danger we face, seem happy enough that Uncle Sam is taking steps to keep up with the new technology.

"The country as a whole didn't seem upset," huh? Do you have any clue at all as to what is going on in the lefty blogosphere over this? What constitutes "the country as a whole," by the way? Any state south of the Mason-Dixon line and west of the Mississippi River? And I guess everyone in these areas was too busy going deaf listening to music on their iPods (TM) too loudly to realize that they were getting sold down the river.

Ask yourself: Do you think it's a bad idea for the feds, as U.S. News & World Report mentioned, to monitor Islamic sites inside the United States for suspicious radiation leaks?

The phrase, "suspicious radiation leaks from Islamic sites," aside from being vague, has suddenly popped up all over the place throughout our corporate media over the last day or so as some kind of justification for Bush's illegal spying. Has anyone besides me noticed that?

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is up in arms - but are you? If you were to read in the paper that some FBI agent has gotten in trouble over pointing a Geiger counter at a mosque, would you be inclined to give the FBI agent the benefit of the doubt? I thought so.

More "divide and conquer" Repug sympathizer BS - what is it that they would expect to find exactly? Material to make bombs that could be detonated remotely and spew chemical agents all over the place? If that's what the danger is, then give us some clue. I know you can't tell us everything, but give us a hint at least. As taxpayers paying salaries of FBI agents, don't we deserve at least that much? Besides, I've read about the FBI conducting surveillance lately on all kinds of people who aren't doing anything illegal. And I love the way Pinkerton just casually blows off a group of people who could provide valuable assistance to us by telling them that their concerns don't matter.

The Dec. 28 issue of USA Today details government plans to deploy security agents at major airports to engage in "behavioral screening." That is, agents chat up passengers, looking for anything suspicious. It's a tactic that's worked in Israel for years, and it's being introduced here, starting with Boston's Logan Airport - the departure point, remember, for two of the 9/11 doomed flights.

Uh, yes, we remember. We'll never forget, actually. How much does Pinkerton think this will actually help? Maybe the Israelis do it - I'll give him the benefit of the doubt - but I'm sure they don't approach someone unless they have MUCH BETTER INTELLIGENCE ON THIS PERSON than we could ever have right now. Besides, it's not like we've ended up detaining people for no reason (see Padilla, Jose) by skirting the rules, right (profiling, in a word)?

Hey, give it a shot, but just don't expect it to be a panacea, OK? And DON'T abuse this tactic and drag in the wrong perp, as it were, and use our tax money in unnecessary litigation to correct your mistake.

But of course, the Massachusetts ACLU already has sued to oppose any such program. Whom do you think the overwhelming majority of Americans want to see prevail on this question? Yes, civil liberties matter, but the majority has rights, too, and if the majority puts a premium on the nation's safety, that view deserves respect.

OK, I'll go along with that. But how about some more details on the ACLU's suit? Oh, sorry...I forgot; that's a bad "liberal" group that just has to be wrong here, doesn't it?

Some say these government actions are taking us closer to 1984. But, in fact, the key year was 1651.

OK, I'm going to stop here for a minute because I sense another one of these "how barbaric we human beings are and aren't we lucky we've been civilized for so long and how lucky we are now to have Dubya who understands the enemy at this time and place" moments that the Repugs and their sympathizers love so much, as if all of the hard-earned success that this country has enjoyed prior to January 2001 was some kind of happy accident. They can't justify what Dubya does in a present-day context, so they feel they have to try and do so by revisiting the distant past. Un-freaking-believable!

That's when the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes published The Leviathan, a hugely influential political science tome that laid the intellectual groundwork for a strong central government. Hobbes wrote that in a state of nature, without benefit of law and law enforcement, life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." He believed in strong government, but he was no totalitarian. Instead, he was reacting to the Wars of Religion that had raged across Europe for the previous century and a half, in which Catholics and Protestants enthusiastically burned and butchered one another by the millions. His own country had just been wracked by a decade-long civil war.

Clearly, a powerful state was needed - a regime that, as he put it, would possess a monopoly of force within the society. Would people lose some of their freedoms? Sure they would, and among the freedoms lost was the freedom to hack to death the deviationist next door.

More "lizard brained, run for your lives because al Qaeda is spending every waking moment of its life trying to figure out how to kill us in our beds" garbage (yes, they're horrible and dangerous, but we fight them with strength, resolve, and common sense, not utter panic).

We like to think we have made progress in the four centuries since, especially here in the United States. But we're up against a basic reality: As populations grow denser, and as technology improves, there's a natural need for more regulation to keep people's elbows, and machines, from banging into each other.

So it's the fault of technology and overpopulation? Gee, maybe I'll just go dig out "Quest For Fire" from my musty VHS tape collection, sit around and watch it for a few days and de-evolve into a caveman (dreaming of a youthful Rae Dawn Chong) and pretend that the problem will go away, huh? That makes about as much sense as your last sentence.

That's why, for example, Wyoming is a more libertarian place than New York City.

Example???

Out West, where miles might separate people, you can pretty much do what you want. But, if millions are going to live close to one another, then lots of red tape is going to thread itself around each resident, governing not only obvious concerns such as weapons and pollution, but matters such as noise abatement and cigarette smoking.

So I guess I should buy a burnoose and move to Nebraska? Here I come, Hafez El Achim Kenny Bob Dupree! Git along, little doggies (praise Allah).

And now, in the name of homeland security, more regulating - spying, if you prefer - is coming.

Even so, someday, somewhere, a Big One is going to go off. And after that, all controversies about civil liberties - and, by the way, immigration - will look different in the eyes of the survivors. An updated Hobbesian paradigm of governance will emerge - unless, of course, it's an Orwellian paradigm instead.

I can't believe people actually get paid to write this crap. Where's Major Bowes' hook when you need it?

Now for some common sense (and a bit of inspiration) from Paul Campos.