Two Americas
By Mitch Berg
As John Edwards used to say, there are two Americas.
On the subject of freedom versus safety, there certainly are. And one of the Americas – the one that would give up liberty to get safety – is growing, and the other, the ones that are pretty hard-core about liberty? That one’s shrinking.
Wendy Kaminer, writing a few weeks back in that noted conservative tool, The Atlantic, noted that while in any group – especially a group of 660,000 like Boston – there will be heroes and cowards and lots in the middle, but when the heat is on, people will retreat to the comforting arms of Mother Government.
No matter what we say:
David Ortiz brags that “nobody is going to dictate our freedom,” and I assume he hasn’t heard of the Patriot Act or warrantless wiretaps, much less the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. Dennis Lehane can be excused for declaring that “they messed with the wrong city,” but don’t take seriously his confidence that not much will change: “Trust me,” he adds implausibly, “we won’t be giving up any civil liberties to keep ourselves safe because of this.”
Of course we will. We’ve been surrendering liberty in the hope of keeping ourselves safe for the past decade. The marathon bombings will hasten our surrender of freedom from the watchful eye of law enforcement. The Boston Globe is already clamoring for additional surveillance cameras, which are sure to be installed to the applause of a great many Bostonians. You can rationalize increased surveillance as a necessary or reasonable intrusion on liberty, but you can’t deny its intrusiveness, or inevitable abuses.
Every disaster – at least the man-made ones – lead to calls for less liberty and more government control. Sandy Hook – a disaster that could have been prevented or controlled by precisely one government intervention, an armed cop (or teacher – or, for that matter, parent) led to the biggest surge in demand (real and astroturf) for paring back the Second Amendment in 25 years.
Kaminer notes the disconnect between Americans’ and their leaders’ words and their actions:
You shouldn’t deny the fear that drives the diminution of freedom. You’ll only end up looking foolish. “A bomb can’t beat us,” President Obama assured Bostonians three days after the attack. “We don’t hunker down … we don’t cower in fear.” Yes we do. Less than 24 hours after Obama left town, hundreds of thousands of us were “sheltering in place.”
Of course, the very act of living with a civil government involves giving up some freedom; getting a drivers license, paying taxes, following procedure and voting and negotiating to reach consensus with your idiot neighbors to change the rules we all go by, having a police force; all of them involve surrendering some form of liberty. And most of us, even the most libertarian, go along with some of it, since they’re broadly considered acceptable trade-offs.
But a new CNN/Time/ORC poll shows that Americans – at least, the Americans who take polls – are willing to trade more and more:
A new poll shows a willingness by 4 out of 10 Americans to give up some civil liberties to figåht terrorism. But they don’t want the government eavesdropping on their cell phone calls or emails.
The CNN/Time/ORC International Poll shows that concerns about terrorism have increased since the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings. Forty percent say they are worried someone in their family might become a terrorism victim. That number is up 6 percentage points from a CNN poll conducted on the 10th anniversay of 9/11.
When it comes to security versus personal freedoms, 81 percent favor expanding use of cameras on streets and in public places. That’s up 20 points since 2001. Seventy-nine percent favor using facial-recognition technology to search for suspected terrorists at public events.
But only 30 percent want the government to increase monitoring of cell phone and email conversations to prevent terrorist acts. Slightly more than half, 55 percent, favor law enforcement monitoring of online chat rooms and other forums.
But commerce need not worry:
Americans are still mostly refusing to respond to terrorism by changing their routines. Seventy percent said they would not be any less likely to attend large public events in order to reduce their chances of being a victim of a terrorist attack.
This is pretty dire stuff – or, if you’re a DFLer, music to your ears.
It’s easy to take the hard-Libertarian tack; “he who trades liberty for security ends up with neither”. And it’s true; the search for the bombers in Boston itself showed this, metaphorically speaking. The people of Boston “voluntarily” hunkered down, “voluntarily” let their houses be searched (or so the government and media lines went) – and waited nearly a day at Mother Government’s mercy with no result, before the younger Tsarnaev was found by a civilian.
But if you’re concerned about the future of liberty in this country, the behavior of government isn’t your biggest concern – although that is truly worrisome, with the government confiscating guns, food and supplies after Hurricane Katrina, making up watch lists of average Americans involved in mundane non-left causes, police departments acting officially in ways that used to be considered “rogue” (all the while militarizing themselves to an extent that’d boggle the minds of cops 30 years ago), its behavior after Sandy, and now the Boston Dragnet.
No, your biggest concern is your fellow Americans.
Partly it’s things like the polls above; so many well-meaning Americans are willing to trade liberty for (short-term) security.
More so? It’s the way that our larger culture is stigmatizing the very concern for liberty.
More on that later.
May 2nd, 2013 at 12:28 pm
No, your biggest concern is your fellow Americans.
Unfortunately, yes.
May 2nd, 2013 at 1:07 pm
There’s Americans, and then there’s Amerikans.
May 2nd, 2013 at 6:40 pm
The surveillance cameras everywhere is adequately portrayed in the CBS series, “Person of Interest.” Actually, it’s on tonight at 8:00 and it’s not bad for network TV.
May 2nd, 2013 at 8:27 pm
Kudos to the law enforcement agencies dealing with this problem, who identified the suspects with remarkable speed and have handled an extremely difficult situation with calm but decisive measures. Cable TV? Not so much.
I suspect public officials were deathly afraid of further violence, and of being blamed later for not taking precautions. But I worry that potential copycats will be inspired rather than deterred by the combination of media frenzy and governmental overreaction.
May 3rd, 2013 at 9:12 am
Mitch:
I realize that you think it’s total surrender, but if you heard two terrorists might be hiding in your neighbor and the police knock on the door asking to come inside to look for the terrorist that you will say no? That you will search your house by yourself?
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
May 3rd, 2013 at 9:19 am
Mitch:
With all the babble you did here I think you missed the point. In terms of wanting to have security people are willing to go along with plans that they think might make them and their children more secure without even thinking or asking questions.
The parents of Sandy Hook for example are lobbying for a law because that makes them think they are doing something (always a reason to do something wrong) good and because they are getting a solution to stop it from happening again. Mind you they are totally ignoring the concept if a teacher or a guard with a gun was able to fire a gun at the Sandy Hook person even with one clip or round of bullets that would’ve bought time for some kids to run away that might have lived. Not to mention a lucky shot might have stopped him in his tracks before he harmed anyone else.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
May 3rd, 2013 at 10:35 am
Did you people see the video of (literally) black-booted troops dragging people out of their houses, arms raised and then searching them as they (again literally) ran a gauntlet?
The day I am filmed in a sheep costume, please someone, put a round in behind my ear.
May 3rd, 2013 at 10:41 am
“Kudos to the law enforcement agencies dealing with this problem, who identified the suspects with remarkable speed and have handled an extremely difficult situation with calm but decisive measures. Cable TV? Not so much.”
Hmm, from reports I have seen it was puiblic at large that first connected the dots via analysis of youtube videos posted right after the attack. Were the LE on the parallel track? Quite possible. However your outhand remark dismissing crowdsourcing is quite in character for you. No surprises there.
May 3rd, 2013 at 10:44 am
…if you heard two terrorists might be hiding in your neighbor and the police knock on the door asking to come inside to look for the terrorist that you will say no? That you will search your house by yourself?…”
You better believe it! Second amendment spells out I have the right, yes, RIGHT, to posses means to defend myself, so no muslim terrorist will be safe anywhere in my house, and I would have no qualms searching it myself.
May 3rd, 2013 at 10:44 am
closed tag, sorry.
May 3rd, 2013 at 8:15 pm
jpa > turn that frown upside down
Unfortunately for Salah Barhoum, he was already on the cover of the NY Post, labeled as a person of interest. There were over a dozen others, that were the victims of shoddy detective work – their identities were broadcast publicly while they were accused of crimes they had nothing to do with and maligned by the national media as terrorists. In reality, Barhoum and others were not even being investigated by the authorities involved with the case. Instead, they had been outed by anonymous commenters on Reddit and 4Chan, who believed they were guilty based upon their clothes and appearance. It’s police work: hard, painstaking, but the best done by the experts. Crowd-sourcing has its limits – and Reddit and 4chan demonstrated it very effectively.
May 4th, 2013 at 12:12 am
Just plain:
Lets keep in mind that I might be outnumbered two to one by the terrorists. There is likely more than two cops doing the search to protect my house let alone me.
I might not have bullet proof vests which could increase my odds of getting killed.
So it might be a little safer to let them search the house for me once especially if I have nothing to hide!
That’s the safer play even if I’m trained gun permit owner.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
May 4th, 2013 at 7:19 am
WH, thank you for a cogent argument FOR high capacity magazines.
May 4th, 2013 at 7:27 am
Emery, you are not addressing the key issue I brought up. Something you learned from your favorite Goobernor with an intelligence of a 15-year-old? You pointed out to follies of rush to judgment, yet poo-pooed the fact it was a youtube video that led to identification of the perps, never mind police begging for tips from the general public to find persons of interest via all media outlets! Moreover, it was NOT the police who hunted down the terrorist, but a citizen who stumbled on him, OUTSIDE of the cordoned perimeter! Dude, you are blind.
May 4th, 2013 at 7:36 am
As re standard-capacity magazines – what JPA said.
And Walter? If the cops note that there are terrorists in my house, and ask if they can search, I may say yes – if I just got home from work and am not positive there’s nobody there – and I may say no, if I’ve been home for a while and am reasonably sure I’ve got no uninvited guests. I’ll definitely take them up on clearing my detached garage; room clearance is scary stuff.
The problem is warrantless searches of homes where there’s no probable cause, and – even worse – treating citizens like they’re guilty until proven innocent. That stomps on the Fourth Amendment. I have a huge problem with that.
May 4th, 2013 at 8:18 am
Mitch:
At least you took my comment more seriously than Just Plain Angry did. The point I was trying to make it looked like you were being sarcastic by using the word “voluntarily” in quotation marks. These were not police officers knocking on doors for the fun of it to search your house. They were saying they were looking for a dangerous criminal. And you took my position that if I wasn’t 100% sure that my house was safe to let them search.
Just Plain:
What goods a large capacity magazine do me if I’m trying to fire at one terrorist and the other terrorist attacks me from behind and I’m distracted because of my focus on the first terrorist?
Haven’t you seen any movies or television shows where a villain is searching for the hero and the hero comes out of hiding to beat the villain. Well if the terrorist views himself as the hero then there is a scenario where if I do the search I might lose a search in one or two scenarios. If the search I do is the one or two scenario I’m dead even with a better weapon!
And finally if the terrorist is there and I see him and we fire at same time the odds of survival are dependent on whose first shot is on the mark. Even a well trained marksman might miss their first shot.
I guess you’re perfect because you won’t consider these possibilities. So I don’t think I’m perfect and if I’m offered a chance by the police to search I will have a couple of reasons to want to play it safe.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
May 6th, 2013 at 12:29 pm
Haven’t you seen any movies or television shows
Are you kidding me? This is where you get your information from? Please tell me you do not think guns have endless magazines, or that perps are zombies impossible to kill.
In your scenarios, regardless whether I decide to defend to myself or not, I am dead because “hero” always wins – in the movies. I would like to challenge that perception and have a say in the matter. Not everyone is a compliant sheep.
May 7th, 2013 at 12:26 am
Just plain:
Just to make sure you’re saying:
One, that if there are two or more terrorists in the house you will rather search it by yourself?
Two, that if you see a terrorist that you will hit the terrorist with your first shot 100% guaranteed!
Three, I know that there aren’t endless magazines in guns (some could have six to ten or more). You’re the person who used the term high capacity magazines. So back to my original point of what good is a large capacity magazine or if you want to make the argument a good bullet capacity (after all that’s what makes it high capacity) if you miss the first shot? For example what if person was hiding behind your furnace when you spotted them and fired?
The point I’m trying to make your scenarios for which you have been attacking me is dependent on the confidence of your ability to hit that first shot 100% of the time. So when you shoot your 100 or more shots every time at the firing range do you hit every single shot?
My say is I want to live and if I’m foolish enough to search my own house even with lots of training carrying a perfect gun with the right amno which “might” get me killed to take advantage of the police doing a free search because they have to be just as well trained as me and just as well equipped to do the search and out number the terrorist(s).
So I hope the day comes when you do that search that you do hit your first shot since I wouldn’t want to say when I meet you in Heaven I tried to warn you.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN