larry’s post today on FISA and the press to me doesn’t quite make the point it intends to. in truth, if the terrorists thought that calls originating in the US via US citizens were exempt from being listened to, then surely they would want to take advantage of that fact in their strategy. if they were, and then learned from the Times article that they might have been wrong, that will change their behavior immediately, and quite possibly to our short-term disfavor.
more below.
it is obvious that any enemy studies what it considers the weaknesses of its intended victim.
it is also obvious that the very things that terrorists won’t allow for in their world view–openness and progressiveness–are the very things that they will seek to use against us. whatever works. this is an unfortunate fact but it is a fact nonetheless. and it helps me make my point–there is a way to deal with this problem. it’s called fascism.
with fascism, the NY Times won’t get a chance to publish this article at all because they will be told they can’t by the government and that will be that. anyway, even if they did the people won’t care because they all agree that dear leader was doing what he had to do, no questions asked. in fact, in this society we will expect to have all of our calls monitored, the better to make sure we commit no thoughtcrimes.
but, we don’t live there. we live in a free society. we have rules. we know that some of these rules allow for the possibilty of balancing the needs of individual libertyand shared governance. we’re really into the individual thing here, you can read it in our constitution. living in this place comes with risks though, like maybe people can infiltrate us and try to hurt us. that’s a chance we take. to mitigate against that, we creat laws that we believe will allow us to again keep that balance. one of those laws was FISA. that’s the one we chose. we didn’t give up any more rights than we had thought we had to.
so to sum this up, larry and i have the same conclusion (Bush is a bad guy who broke the law)but differ on the net result of the disclosure of that law-breaking. i have to say i would choose to live in a free society over one that will be free just as soon as we secure it from “the bad guy” who is just over the next hill. if that means that sometimes we are in a bit more danger, that is the chance i’m willing to take.
