Starting to Get It

Do you remember, about a month ago, I asked what the big deal about Alito was? He seemed innoucuous at the time, conservative, temperate, reasonable, qualities this nation seems to need to embrace. And by conservative, I do not mean the constriction of civil liberties, which is where our leaders seem to be running us lately. What I mean is not taking radical stances, no extremist positions on either side of center, a return to balance. Our government was designed to incorporate a system of checks and balances with the three branches. Right now, it seems that tree has been pruned.

As more and more memos are unearthed, and as our President backpedals about why illegal wiretaps are necessary in modern day America, I'm starting to see what I was missing. This morning, I read this article, describing Alito's unwillingness to invoke the 14th Amendment--that which the legal underpinning for many of this nation's property rights and civil liberties, including, but certainly not limited to, the right to an abortion and to legalize same-sex unions, protects. Alito's stance, in several cases, has been such:

Alito declared that the 14th Amendment must be read in the context of history -- that rights not recognized when it was ratified in 1868 are suspicious.

''I think that our [liberty rights] inquiry must be informed by history," Alito wrote.

He argued, ''It is therefore significant that at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment and for many years thereafter," the claimed liberty right in the case before him ''was not recognized." He voted against it. (source)

The article goes on to discuss what I see as the crux of the matter in the debate over civil liberties, the fact that it is a double-edges sword, and it goes to the heart of the matter of the current debate over Bush's wiretaps. He consistently claims that the wiretaps were directly needed to ensure American security and safety from terrorists. Citing this article again,

Liberty rights ''is a two-edged sword," said Richard Fallon of Harvard Law School. ''When it's cutting one way, liberals hate it. When it's cutting the other way, conservatives hate it." (source)

My problem is, it's been abused by the party in power for too long. My friend Trusty, a lawyer, wrote a post that really helped clarify this for me. He talks about the tension between liberty and safety.

What's totally embarrassing about this debate is the failure to recognize and acknowledge the clear tension between liberty and safety. It seems rather obvious to me that if you want liberty and privacy, you accept the fact that there is risk. Potentially serious risk. You instead want safety, then you give up liberty and privacy. It's pretty much as simple as that.

Our founding fathers knew this. They were nowhere near as stupid as our current politicians are. They favored a constitutional approach to balancing liberty and the risks that accompany it. Notice that word balance. It is an important word. It implies that there are no absolutes, but only balances to strike. Freedom is not absolute, and neither is the government's power or authority to do as it chooses in the name of protecting its citizens from harm. (source)

Our leaders have been exploiting this tension for far too long. They stand in front of us and scream "terrorists" and "national security" and "9/11" and shamelessly exploit the fear that most Americans live with in order to promote their agenda of creating a dictatorship masked under the cloak of democracy. The Iraq constitution is a perfect illustration here. We spent all this time and energy and soldiers' lives to "liberate the country from an evil dictator" (not arguing the evil dictator point), and "help spread democracy around the world", and what do the Iraqis do? They hold national elections and immediately write a constitution that sets up a theocracy in that country. Huh? Did thousands of American soliders and civilian contractors need to die in order for them to set up EXACTLY THE SAME GOVERNMENT, except with a different leader? And our governement continues to feed us the lies that justify this, and strip away the protections that make this country the leaders of democracy in the free world and sugar coats the lies with plays upon our own fears, assuming we'll swallow that pill again and again and again.

We have to decide, are we a country that honors Patrick Henry's rallying cry of "Give me liberty or give me death" and the state of New Hampshire's motto, "Live Free or Die", or are we going to sit back, no longer take risks and continue to become a nation of fools?