The past 6 years have seen an unprecedented rise in the institutionalization of fear as public policy in the United States. This is of course primarily due to the attacks of 9/11, but not because of the terrorist attacks. The institutionalization of fear is entirely due to our political leaders, led at the top by a president but followed by the many lawmakers within the legislative branch independent of political party. The unprecedented abuse of fundamental clauses of our Constitution such as the right to have no unreasonable search and seizure, the right not to be tortured, and now even the freedom of religion all result from the institutionalization of fear as a policy of government. This New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/us/10prison.html) details the latest in the long string of evils committed in the name of preventing terrorism. The article has a great deal of information, but the most important portion of the article is the first paragraph:
Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been
quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and
materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.
Yes, it really is true, books that might foment radical muslim ideology or other terrorist ideas are being removed from prisons.
I almost don't know what to say. Prisons already by design remove one of the three rights so often shouted from the hilltop when quoting the American Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
Removal of liberty is of course the point of a prison, but removal of the possibility of spiritual enlightenment is a dangerous game to play. It falls under the category of "medicine is worse than the disease." It is impossible to decide in advance what will result in a prisoner's transformation into a new person. The mindset of creating an underclass of people with fewer rights has never resulted in long-term good. Just ask those whose ancestors have been enslaved, or those who live today in a caste system. It's not just morally wrong, it's bad for everyone. This has been known for thousands of years. The ChNew Testament includes dozens of examples of Jesus reaching out to people universally reviled, whether because of their profession (prostitutes and tax collectors), disease (leprosy) or because they were imprisoned. Of course, many Christians argue that you should be nice to prisoners because who knows - maybe Christ will return as one of today's underclass just as he was first a lowly carpenter. The real reason is not so self-serving. The real reason is that it is wrong to consider other humans to be worth less than your own self-worth, regardless of your reasoning. This is above religious teachings, above secular laws, and demonstrably bad public policy by a quick scan of the reasons for past governments' demise.
One could of course argue that prisoners are to be punished in prison and violating basic civil rights doesn't matter. One could argue that all of the changes made to our society are necessary evils such as the warrantless monitoring of hundreds of phone conversations overseas, the re-instatement of guilt by association (providing material support to a group that may engage in terrorism is illegal, even if you were funding charitable efforts of that group like providing food to starving families in Palestinian territories), pre-emptive invasion of countries not threatening any harm to us, holding prisoners without charges because they might someday engage in terrorism if released. One would be wrong.
All of these policy decisions were based on pre-conceived fears, and not on evidence that they can actually work to prevent the criminal act of violent terrorism. In fact, the evidence suggests that wasting time on broad dragnets like warrantless surveillence actually decreases the chance of finding a real threat, and instead results in the innocent being treated as guilty without a trial and often the guilty being completely overlooked. Guilt by association was the hallmark of the McCarthy hearings in Congress. Not many people remember today the famous "I have here in my hand a list of suspected Communists..." line of Joseph McCarthy. In retrospect, the threat of communism seems absurd. In fact, the United States was the one instigating military agression by vastly expanding the nuclear arsenal, developing submarines that could deploy missiles to major population centers in the USSR within 15-30 minutes, and creating NATO to counteract the perceived threat of the Eastern bloc. The USSR was reacting to the very real threat of the United State's perceived military aggression, which was ironically the result of the United State's fear of communism. Sound familiar?
Torturing prisoners, removing freedom of religion, unreasonable search and seizure - all of these are not the ultimate problem. The reason these are enshrined in our Constitution as no-nos for our government is because all of them have been known tools of despots and dictatorships for hundreds of years. Every freedom in the Constitution is there to guarantee that we do not have a despotic system of government, and the reason is simply because despotism does not work. Putting too much power in the hands of too few results in far worse decisions being made about the lives of those who are governed. This isn't rocket science, but it requires the minimal ability of self-recognition on the part of those in power.
I challenge our leaders to ask themselves the real reason why they feel compelled to remove so many essential liberties. Is it really to free America from the tyranny of terrorism and the fear that it engenders? Perhaps it is to "temporarily" enslave Americans to fear in order to bring a speedier death to nameless faceless "terrorists" for the greater good of society? Or maybe it is because the American system of government has failed, and liberty cannot result in true happiness, only total control, total monitoring of the populace for potential threats can ensure the safety of the public.
Sound familiar? Substitute "bourgeois capitalist" for "terrorist" and "class injustice" for "fear" and you have the exact rationale used by communist dictators for enslaving and murdering their own people in order to bring about the greater good.
Fortunately, in the United States of America, citizens still have the full right of freedom of speech without fear of imprisonment (as long as you don't divulge classified information like how the advisor to the president tried to expose an active duty CIA agent for political reasons), and if our leaders fail us, it is then only up to us to remove them and hope that their replacements will understand why the old guys were kicked out. The question then, is what are you going to do? Will you condone the deaths of innocents because your leader has provided you some selfish benefit, or will you do the right thing and let your congresspeople and your senators know what you think about these issues and how your vote will be cast?
The tyranny of fear is all-corrupting, it results in not just fewer liberties but more deaths to innocent people. The number of civilians killed in Iraq is unconscionable, and far exceeds the number of murders of Iraqi citizens perpetrated by Saddam Hussein. Focusing all resources on anti-terrorism directly resulted in the unpreparedness of FEMA to deal with Hurricane Katrina, which is empirically a much greater threat to the life and liberty of Americans than terrorism (many more hurricanes hit the US than do terrorists). Please help America put a halt to the madness of fear-governed policy, and minimally participate in government by calling or emailing your representatives. It is time for U.S. citizens to turn the empty rhetoric about freedom and democracy so often foisted upon other countries into true freedom and democracy at home.
