Privacy/Safety duality is a FALSE CHOICE

Since the usual suspects, notably Ms. Mitchell from NBC, who I think is a cutie but who drags some serious establishment baggage, notably her husband Alan Greenspan, who is a really smart guy we owe thanks to for keeping the Bush administration from making us trade using cowpies for currency, but is really REALLY establishment, well...

Now where was I ?

Oh yeah, since the usual suspects are dragging out the old canard that "well kiddies, it's a choice between the funny hats not fondling your hard drive, and Osama not fondling your cities. Now seriously, which do you WANT ?", well, I thought it would be appropriate to point out that presenting us with alternatives is bullshit to begin with, we'll define our own, thanks, and beyond that, other members of the developed world don't have these problems with making their publics feel like they're living in a police state just to solve a security problem. A few examples:

1. England. Bad. Their approach sucks, you do feel like you're in a police state. In part, this was a needed response to the IRA. But beyond that, it was Margabag Thatcher's program for replacing the toffs with "good solid English lower and middle class ethics", which was really code for importing lowbrow American conservative culture. "We've got to be tough" replaced "we've got to be English", and so Orwell's quite English vision of an abusive state came closer to existing.

2. Israel. Unique. It's kind of exotic to get interviewed by very pretty but very no-nonsense young ladies when you arrive for a flight, and the initial shock of seeing a trainful of 19-year olds in uniform sleeping peacefully, with their fully automatic weapons stacked neatly between the seats, takes a moment's getting used to. But after that, you find that once you're "through the gate" and into the secure zone, it's a free western country with a sense of shared aims between people and government. Security is surely ubiquitous, and yet, maybe because the entire populace is engaged in it, there's no sense of adversariality between people and state. These impressions are vintage 1999, so around the time of Barak's election, so pre- the last Intifada. May be quite different now, but I would expect that the people have the understanding that that vision of common purpose with the government is needed - of, by, for.

3. Germany, France, Italy, Benelux, Spain, the western EU zone. Security is done professionally - lest anyone think they have it easy there, they've been fighting terror for the last 40 years, since the leftist extremists of the 60's and 70's. Pairs of guards with submachine guns strolled peacefully through Frankfurt airport in 1979, and yet there was no sense of threat - the public did not put them on edge, and the public was not put on edge by them. This continues as far as I'm concerned today - there is a clear understanding, derived as far as I'm concerned directly from the Enlightenment values the Repubicans are attempting to rob us of, that in a modern civilized nation state, government comes from the people, acts in their service, and is directed by them, and that any security measures which are implemented are 1. done by agreement of the people and 2. implemented with safeguarding of a civil society, whose primary characteristic is respect for individual civil liberties (not law and order, that follows from the first), as a prime concern. Again, there is no sense of adversariality between the mass public and government, maybe because after several millenia of state-sponsored mayhem, the people seem inclined to insist on living in a modern enlightened nation state. Strange, I wonder why they do that...

Meanwhile our usual suspects here fuck around as usual and tell us we should straighten up and fly right. I suspect the conservative gratitude thing is operative again, we shouldn't have freedom because we're not grateful enough. Generally, for everything; it's supposed to be a way of life. So if we won't keep ourselves humble, those who know better will coerce us into it. Indicating that they do not understand that the right to liberty is inherent and not granted... But we knew that.

Republicans think you have to pick between Safety and Civil Rights and Democrats think that you can have both.

I think the tide has turned and when we set it out starkly as a choice...the American public is now overwhelmingly in favor of Civil Rights and Freedom over security.

I'd love to make the population understand the more complex issues here and in debates it is good for us to draw out all the aspects of it that we can, including the absence of any need for this dictatorial crap.

But I think the Bushie's approach of trying to scare people is wearing thin...people like their privacy and freedom...this hurts them and helps us today.

we can have them both. You are buying into the frame, box, whatever that the Republicans use.

I'm able to understand that form and substance are two different things and can be assessed both together and individually.

In this case there is a fallacy that the Bush Administration wants to create to use against us. However, regardless of whether or not it's a fallacy I'm stating that they have read the winds wrong and this argument breaks for us...both at the substance level...and at the fallacious form level. In other words, EVEN if the argument were an either/or dichotomy (yes a false dichotomy) we are still in the lead on this particular question because people are seeing civil liberties as more important that securty. Why not play BOTH angles since they both work in our favor?

Don't know how I can make it clearer than that.