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Also this issue: The War at Home Refuse |
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March 20-26, 2003
loose canon
It’s one of those great historical quotes that somehow got lodged in America’s collective consciousness, and has been there since before the Revolution. It’s a dose of wisdom you didn’t know you had, and which tends to pop up when you need it most. Like now, for instance.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
As our security alert climbs from yellow to orange to what John Timoney calls "orange plus" and beyond, this is a good time to recall that trading liberty for safety is an idea at least as old as the nation itself, and never a wise one.
The line is credited to Benjamin Franklin; it was even the motto of his "Historical Review" in 1759. But some scholars question whether Franklin himself actually penned the phrase, because it appears in print as early as 1755. It was a battle cry apparently applied to all kinds of controversies, many too abstruse to make much sense to us today.
Still, if any motto should be engraved on courtroom walls today, it is this phrase, which says simply that the value of freedom is too great to be measured against a little comfort.
And yet this current administration is attempting to put a price tag on freedom, literally to measure its worth in dollars. Perhaps, in a time of war, even discount it a bit.
According to a recent New York Times story, top advisers to President Bush are contacting experts around the country and asking them to "weigh the benefits of tighter security against the Œcosts' of lost privacy and freedom."
Quick, check why yes, I see Franklin spinning now.
The administration is trying to do a cost/benefit analysis, to come up with numbers to justify further the suppression of constitutional rights.
Civil rights advocates, like the ACLU and Ralph Nader, are actually delighted with the Bush administration's actions. They reason that whatever price is applied to freedom -- from zero to the worth of the universe -- the entire exercise will raise questions fundamental to who we are as Americans.
In other words, even some conservatives agree that any scheme to "cost out" basic freedoms is destined to fail. High or low, the price will never be right.
Americans' freedoms are not commodities to be discounted, on which options can be sold or held in trust by an offshore corporation.
Because once lost, freedom is difficult to get again.
And so, even with our security at risk, whatever price the administration decides to place on rights to move freely and to speak out will be wrong. At any price, it will be theft.
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