There’s a reason why The Star-Spangled Banner links “the land of the free” with “the home of the brave.” Citizens without courage will give up a little more of their freedom every time they get scared. Today, Americans are afraid of terrorism, and so our freedom is slipping away.
In a free society, especially a free society with guns, there’s no sure defense against terrorism. (The D. C. snipers showed how much panic two guys with a rifle and a beat-up car can cause.) Good police work helps, but if you’re looking for an air-tight guarantee that you or your loved ones won’t be victims of terrorism, you need to move to a police state. You may not be brave enough to live in the land of the free.
When George Bush says, “We’re fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here,” his implicit message is that ordinary citizens don’t have to be brave – that’s what we hire professional soldiers for. In the Right’s vision, America only needs enough courageous citizens to staff the armed forces. The Romans went down this path: Originally they had citizen soldiers, then professional soldiers recruited from the citizenry, then non-citizen professional soldiers. Eventually, they had an army with no particular loyalty to the institutions of Rome. It didn’t serve them well.
Somehow, we have let the Right make the topsy-turvy argument that civil libertarians are wimps. Real men, they imply, do whatever it takes to go get the terrorists. Actually, it’s the Patriot Act that’s wimpy – a cowardly Congress surrendered our freedom at the first sign of danger. Hit us once, and we start locking people up without trials. Liberals need to turn the language of courage rightside-up. The TV-western heroes of my youth – the Matt Dillons and the Ben Cartwrights – had the courage to do things right when more fearful men wanted to cut corners. Heroes stand up to the lynch mobs; they don’t lead them.
Return to 10 Ideas for 2008 by Doug Muder