Is it Freedom or Fear?
From an article entitled, ‘Bush Calls Domestic Spy Program 'Limited' by DEB RIECHMANN, of the Associated Press, President Bush says regarding his use of surveillance without a court order, "It's seems logical to me that if we know there's a phone number associated with al-Qaida or an al-Qaida affiliate and they're making phone calls, it makes sense to find out why," Bush said. "They attacked us before, they'll attack us again."
Yes, it does make sense to find out why. And we have set up a system of checks and balances in our government such as the secret court created by congress in 1978 for the purpose of granting warrants for the President or an appointed person in the administration to use surveillance on citizens or non citizens of our country. For our President to find out why, he only has to bring the request for surveillance to the court and have it agreed upon there if there is reason to look into the matter, domestic, or otherwise. The ‘agreeing’ part is key to the checks and balances of a democracy.
The issue is not whether or not it is ok to obtain inside information needed to protect us. The real issue is a two sided one, as I see it. One is the use of fear by the administration to convince us all that we don’t need these checks and balances. To suggest that there are times (in which we now find ourselves) that these checks and balances can be overruled for the benefit of society. These checks and balances are a huge part of what makes a democracy a democracy and in war or not, it is why we are free. The truth of the matter, it seems to me, is that fear is the enemy here; and we are its victims.
The secondary issue stemming from this fear of the ‘new enemy’ as the administration has named it, is the issue of the use of power and when and where our Government’s use of it becomes an infringement of our rights as free citizens rather than a useful tool to keep our country conflict free.
HE CAN TAP MY PHONE ANYTIME?
Fear can bring negative changes in our lives, and has brought down the working governments of countries such as it did in Nazi Germany. We all know how fear of anything restricts our life in the obvious ways. We begin to be afraid to do our normal activities, and question our safety with every step we take, losing our free spirit and to some extent, our actual physical freedom. But what it does on the level of a collective group is what we need to examine because this is what is occurring in our country.
I’ve heard a few people express concern about the President insisting it is ‘ok’ to wiretap United States citizens without court approval. At first, this too was my primary concern; after all, it seems to me, it should be easy enough to do, being the President! But now, my biggest concern has turned to what the fear of Terrorism has done to the average citizen of our free country, both young and old. I have heard too many people saying “I’ve nothing to worry about; they can tap my phone any day.”
We do have something to worry about. It is the belief that we can and we should, trade more personal freedom for what we are told can give us all more safety. This attitude will limit the only freedom we all truly have; the freedom to be a free thinking, free acting, contributor to our society. Be it an anti-war activist, or a practicing Muslim, or yes, even an extreme liberal in a very conservative country. This ‘lying down and rolling over’ and overlooking our government’s request to break the rules on account of our own fears can only lead to us thinking it is ‘ok’ to suspect a person just for reading a book about the fanatical Muslim movement if they judge you to “have more than a normal interest.” The question is, who decides that? How many books do you take out of the library on this subject before you are asked to explain yourself? How long before we begin to dictate that sort of behavior with some sort of law, and begin to suspect family members and our neighbor over such trivial things as book ownership or a passing conversation at the local coffee shop?
THE LEAP THAT FEAR CAN TAKE
That may sound far fetched, and indeed it is quite a big step from here to there, but to prevent that leap we cannot, no matter how fearful we are of Terrorists, allow our government to decide for itself how and when to invade our private world without using the court we set up for that very thing, to keep within the healthy boundaries that checks and balances provide.
Without these checks and balances such as that court, other laws we made to protect citizens such as the right to free speech could be overruled by the government as well in situations they deemed ‘necessary’ , and would affect even our ability to write to newspapers such as what you are reading. It could soon be considered as the suspect behavior of being a sympathizer to the enemy. Think not? Think again. In recent history, people such as the late John Lennon were being considered for deportation from our country, in essence, for suggesting we ‘Give peace a chance.” This is one small example of why we created the court for congress to use.
BEN FRANKLIN'S LEGACY
And since our country’s beginnings, people have been dealing with this attempt at suppression or unnecessary investigation by the governing forces. One such person was Ben Franklin who wrote several pieces for the New England Courant in 1720 as a young man of 17. Although his brother owned the paper, Benjamin had to use a pen name to protect himself from being thrown in jail by the English government. His writing strove to bring awareness to the American public, of the unneeded control the British government was trying to impose upon them. Too many were too willing to simply live with it, having gotten quite accustomed to it in England. This writing eventually landed his older brother in jail for one month, because he was unable to supply them with the author’s name. Benjamin Franklin went on to write many wise things about the politics of freedom under many pseudonyms, due to the ability of the government to suppress and imprison people for such writing. He was very much a part of our freedom as we know it today. He puts it all in a nutshell in this quote of his: “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
Regarding what Franklin and others fought for in the 1700’s, including being able to distribute the important writings that influenced so many, I think a relevant question to ask is what if the American public had instead said to England, “Go ahead, let the King see my writing first, and decide what can be printed or not. I wouldn’t write anything unprintable.”
This idea of allowing our government to be above its own laws is really what we are doing by agreeing to allow private surveillance of our library card, or our phone calls without asking the administration to simply go through the legal channels we have all agreed were necessary. The willingness to disregard this legal process and even encouraging the need to bypass it with statements like “I’ve nothing to hide” sadly mirrors the mindset of a very fearful public.
THE NEW ENEMY IN HITLER'S WORLD
In the days of the Hitler regime, desperate and fearful German citizens were convinced of a ‘new enemy’ to their own economic ‘safety’, and this enemy was called the Jewish people. With this new enemy labeled and identified by the government, so many people of Germany evidently saw reason to look the other way, while millions of their Jewish brothers and sisters were murdered. People today say that could never happen again and I must agree, with a bit of optimistic hope, for the most part. However, the bowing down to fear that I have recently heard among some citizens of our country is disheartening. I think we would do well to pay more attention to the fact that so many people seem so willing to give into fear itself and perhaps this is more of a threat to our freedom and way of life than any act of terrorism.
Without harping too much on condemning our President, who has perhaps made a poor judgment, in very difficult times, maybe we can stand together now in agreeing that we must ask our government to follow the rules and to use this court that was created for good reason in 1978, to put reasonable limits on their ability to ‘protect’ our freedom. It may be very true that what the administration deemed as necessary, was necessary. But it was done in an unnecessary fashion. And that is the issue.
And sticking to this issue, we need to ask ourselves if the overriding of our own system of checks and balances, for the safety of the public, is truly protecting, or limiting our freedom in the end.
Diane L. Perretto
