Liberty v. Safety

The Patriot act was signed into law only a couple of days after 9/11--strange how quickly it got written up. I remember the announcement, but what got me was the people who came out in support of it. Not congressmen or the president, but ordinary people. People who said that they wouldn't mind being searched as long as they could be safer.

I think that most people would, if things got bad enough, put safety before liberty. There's a principled few who'd say that liberty trumps safety always, all the time, no matter what. Ghandi. Patrick Henry. The people who signed the Declaration of Independence. But for many people, that time was 9/11. One terrorist attack and they signed the Patriot Act. I have a somewhat higher threshold--I don't know where it is. You don't know these things until they happen.

Well, it's 2005. We are less free than we were before September 11th. Are we any safer? Iraq is now a center for terrorism. In 2001 we did not have to worry about Iraq attacking us, and now we do, and it's pretty much our fault. There has been an increase in terrorist incidents worldwide. The federal government's response to a natural disaster with several days' advanced notice has been, at best incompetent, at worst diabolical, with FEMA director Michael Brown waiting until far too late to dispatch his people, spending an inordinate amount of energy on propoganda, and turning down other states' offers of help. No, it's 2005 and not only are we less free, we are less safe.