Freedom Is NOT Safety •• Police State USA
Last week's announcement that the terrorist threat warning level has
been raised in parts of New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C.,
has led to dramatic and unprecedented restrictions on the movements
of citizens. Americans wishing to visit the U.S. Capitol must, for
example, pass through several checkpoints and submit to police
inspection of their cars and persons.
Many Americans support the new security measures because they
claim to feel safer when the government issues terror alerts and fills the
streets with militarized police forces. As one tourist interviewed this
week said, "It makes me feel comfortable to know that everything is
being checked." It is ironic that tourists coming to Washington to
celebrate the freedoms embodied in the Declaration of Independence
are so eager to give up those freedoms with no questions asked.
Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of
citizens to live without government interference. Government cannot
create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a
fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute
safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control
over its citizens' lives. This doesn't stop governments, including our
own, from seeking more control over and intrusion into our lives. As
one Member of Congress stated to the press last week, "people who
don't want to be searched don't need to come on Capitol grounds."
What an insult! The Capitol belongs to the American people who pay
for it, not to Congress or the police.
It is worth noting that the government rushes first to protect itself,
devoting enormous resources to make places like the Capitol grounds
safe, while just beyond lies one of the most dangerous neighborhoods
in the nation. What makes Congress more worthy of protection from
terrorists than ordinary citizens?
To understand the nature of our domestic response to the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks, we must understand the nature of government.
Government naturally expands, and any crises whether real or
manufactured serve to justify more and more government power over
our lives. Bureaucrats have used the tragedy of 9/11 as an excuse to
seize police powers sought for decades, such as warrantless searches,
Internet monitoring, and access to bank records. It should be no
surprise that the recently released report of the 9/11 Commission has
but one central recommendation: bigger government and more
spending at home and abroad.
Every new security measure represents another failure of the
once-courageous American spirit. The more we change our lives, the
more we obsess about terrorism, the more the terrorists have won. As
commentator Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig von Mises Institute explains,
terrorists in effect have been elevated by our response to 9/11: "They
are running the country. They determine our civic life. They shape our
private life. They decide how public resources are spent. They may
dictate who gets to be the next president. It should be obvious that the
government doesn't object. Not at all. The government benefits, by
getting ever more reason for ever more money and power."
Every generation must resist the temptation to believe that it lives in the
most dangerous time in American history. The threat of Islamic
terrorism is real, but it is not the greatest danger ever faced by our
nation. This is not to dismiss the threat of terrorism, but rather to put it
in perspective. Those who seek to whip the nation into a frenzy of fear
do a disservice to a country that expelled the British, fought two world
wars, and stared down the Soviet empire.
Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When
we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches,
mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets,
we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of
protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies
neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
Thanks To Ron Paul •• Texas Repub Congressman
6:38:19 AM
