12 September 2009

Time Traveling Back to 9/10

One of my favorite bloggers concurs with Will Wilkinson that we should get back to the "head-up-our-collective-ass" days of 9/10 when we chose to ignore that there was people actively seeking our destruction:

Yet those responsible for this disaster have been successful in hiding behind the shock of the crumbling towers, as if support for their dangerous and deadly policies is inexorably implied by feeling deeply the full weight of 9/11’s tragedy. Those most insistent that we “never forget” 9/11 are those who need our continuing collective complicity in the erosion of our civil liberties, in the weakening of the rule of law, in the unjustified invasion of unrelated foreign countries and the murder of their people, in the policy of state-sanctioned torture.
A very serious criticism that would take a thesis to dissect, but let's look at this "erosion of our civil liberties" thing. As a society, we entrust law enforcement with more powers than your average citizen to maintain the security of our nation. Without security, you can't really have anything (an economy, rule of law, etc.), so I'm willing as a citizen to sacrifice a small portion of liberty to prevent something as catastrophic and devastating as 9/11. So, I don't really constitute having to take my shoes off at the airport and the possibility that my phone calls from Thailand about me having the runs being possibly monitored by the NSA as an "erosion of our civil liberties". I suppose I lose some libertarian credibility, but I'm just too sympathetic to the underlying purpose of law enforcement. As long as its terrorism we are talking about and not something silly (like seatbelt laws).

1 comments:

olgreydog7 said...

One thing we have forgotten is the finger pointing that went on post 9-11. Everyone wanted to say it was Clinton' fault, or Bush's fault, ect ect. That lead to the so called intrusion on civil liberties to prove that "something was being done." Now those same finger pointers have decided that all is well and we can put or shoes back on.