One More For The Road

"I watched "Airplane!" last night and because it was cold, I wrapped myself up in an afghan. That movie is the bomb!"

Imagine I uttered those sentences during the course of an ordinarily inane telephone conversation or wrote them in the text of a casual e-mail. Also, imagine that saying or writing those words, not fully knowing that any sentence with a certain combination or sequence of words may invite governmental intrusion to covertly monitor any of my private conversations from that time forward.

And just by visiting this blog and accepting its cookies onto your computer, you're now an accessory to this non-existent conspiracy. Don't worry, you're welcome.

The topic today is, of course, civil liberties.

When I was in college, I found a quote by Seneca that sticks with me to this day: "He who decides a case without hearing the other side, though he decide justly, cannot be considered just."

As such, I've been debating my feelings toward the NSA's desire for unlimited authority to monitor conversations from suspected terrorists versus the right to freely associate and speak without government intrusion lacking just cause. I understand both points of view.

However, it was something a U.S. senator was quoted having said that put me firmly in the camp opposed to the government's grab for power like a sotten drunk grabbing for more liquor. This senator, a rising star in his party, said, "None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead." Meaning, the government can do whatever it wants to do in order to protect you and keep you alive, even if it means restricting or suspending guaranteed liberties.

I'm rather Burkian when it comes to my approach to government.

Edmund Burke served in the House of Commons in the late 18th century. He is perhaps most famous for strongly supporting the United States Revolution and later fiercely opposing the French Revolution. And for this, he quickly won then lost the support of the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. That's the way love goes.

Burke took a "let's-wait-and-see" attitude when it came to establishing liberty and democracy. He supported the American Revolution because there were quantified abuses of tyranny against the colonies. Moreover, the colonists had established a system of government that stood a good chance of sustaining itself after the revolution. The French Revolution, on the other hand, did not have the same prospect of success. Their revolution, to put words in his mouth, was not for the spirit of liberty, just revolution for the sake of revolution.

Burke, as it happens, was fairly accurate in his observations and predictions. Including the Articles of Confederation (but not the Confederate State's Constitution), the United States has operated under two constitutions for the last 229 years. France, on the other hand, is operating under its fifth constitution in 216 years. Our working constitution was drafted in 1789; France's was drafted in 1958. Our Revolution produced James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington; the French Revolution produced Robespierre and Napoleon Bonaparte.

But back to our topic at hand:

If civil liberties don't mean much when I'm dead, their revocation, therefore, means everything while I'm alive. If my government wants to posthumously arrest me without reading my Miranda rights, I won't complain much. Do it now, and I'll see you before a judge, thank you.

In 1790, Burke published "Reflections on the Revolution in France". It's required reading in just about every freshman Political Science course.

I've attached key paragraphs that grabbed my attention:

"The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial, positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill."

"To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions made by the leaders in any public assembly, they ought to respect, in some degree perhaps to fear, those whom they conduct. To be led any otherwise than blindly, the followers must be qualified, if not for actors, at least for judges; they must also be judges of natural weight and authority."

"When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one."

So if the latest ploy in the War Against Terrorism may be likened to a drunken grab for power, I sometimes fear that we are one shot away from A Reign of Terror.

Monitor this.