Soft on Terror? How About Soft On Freedom?

For quite some time now I've been considering how best to respond to the Bush Administration's push to legalize torture and domestic surveillance. There are all the obvious criticisms of these policies in and of themselves - that torture doesn't work, that it opens up our own troops to this sort of treatment, that it lowers our standing in the world. That domestic surviellance imperils our liberties and concentrates too much authority in an already overmighty executive. All of these points have been made many times of course, so many in fact that they barely bear repeating. It's not that we haven't been warned.

I am tired to being told be to be afraid by my purported leaders. I am tired of being told to just trust them, given their manifest incompetence and ruthless ambition. I am tired of being accused of being "soft on terror" when I raise questions about the Constitution, our tactics in dealing with religious fundamentalism, or the management of the Iraq War. And I am particularly tired of the weak-kneed politicians who demand that we don't torture quite so much being hailed as heroes.

I do think that we're being soft on some things, however, though not "terror." Soft on democracy, perhaps. Soft on liberty. Soft on responsibility, on intelligence, on humanity. Worse, we have been soft on ourselves.

The people in charge are only able to get away with so much because we let them. They spy on us, demonize our own citizens, inflict pain and torture, lie us into a war and then bungle it, alienate our allies, compromise our economic futures ... and we say nothing. Our government is embroiled in the worst corruption scandal since Teapot Dome. And how do we respond? With a shrug.

The only analogy I can come up with is if a man's house is broken into in the middle of the night, he is robbed & beaten, his wife raped, his children kidnaped, and the dog shot, and after its over the only thing he can think to do is go back to sleep. Do you have to burn someone's house down to get his attention?

Watching an episode of the Rome series on HBO, a scrupulous candidate for public office expressed concern about electoral corruption. The response to him was that the people aren't interested in clean elections, but jobs and being fed. Was it any response that their Republic fell? We Americans don't even seem to be as demanding as the ancient Romans anymore. All we seem to want is the next episode of American Idol.

Maybe everyone else likes being told to cower under the covers at the monsters they are told are in the closet. Maybe others are willing to be told what to do & how to think. Perhaps they are happy enough with just the semblance of liberty. But I for one have had much more than enough.