u didn't like freedom anyways

[Guest guest]

Leonard Pitts Jr.: 'It's un-American to give up liberties in hope of

security'

Posted on Sunday, February 19 @ 09:38:22 EST

This article has been read 353 times.

--

Leonard Pitts Jr., The Baltimore Sun

" The enemies of freedom will be defeated. "

- President Bush, 2005

 

" We have met the enemy and he is us. "

- Pogo, 1971

The following happened in the United States of America on Feb. 9 of

this year.

 

The scene is the Little Falls branch of the Montgomery County Public

Library in Bethesda. Business is going on as usual when two men in

uniform stride into the main reading room and call for attention. Then

they make an announcement: It is forbidden to use the library's

computers to view Internet pornography.

 

As people are absorbing this, one of the men challenges a patron about

a Web site he is visiting and asks the man to step outside. At this

point, a librarian intervenes and calls the uniformed men aside. A

police officer is summoned. The men leave. It turns out they are

employees of the county's Department of Homeland Security and were

operating way outside their authority.

 

We are indebted to reporter Cameron W. Barr of The Washington Post for

the account of this incident, which, I feel constrained to repeat, did

not happen in China, Cuba or North Korea. Rather, it happened a few

days ago in this country. Right here in freedom's land.

 

 

 

There are those of us who'd say the country has become less deserving

of that sobriquet in recent years. They would point as evidence to the

detention of U.S. citizens without charges, counsel or recourse, to

laws empowering the government to check up on what you've been reading,

to revelations of illegal eavesdropping.

 

And there are others who'd say, " So what? " They're in the 51 percent,

according to a recent Los Angles Times/Bloomberg poll, who say we

should be ready to give up our freedoms in exchange for security.

 

Apparently, they are ignorant of what Benjamin Franklin said: " They

that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety

deserve neither liberty nor safety. "

 

Apparently, they're also unversed in something Mr. Bush said as a

candidate in 1999: " There ought to be limits to freedom. " Mind you,

this nugget of wisdom wasn't dropped in a discussion of national

security. Rather, it was the future president's reaction to a Web site

that made fun of him.

 

Seven years later, he's clearly getting his wish. It chills me to know

that doesn't chill more of us. Indeed, of all the many things I cannot

fathom about certain of my countrymen and women, their ability to be

sanguine at the threatened abrogation of their rights is very near the

top.

 

The only way I can explain it is that freedom - the right to do, say,

think, go, " live " as you please - is so ingrained in our psyche, has

been such a part of us for so long, that some are literally unable to

imagine life without it. They seem fundamentally unable to visualize

how drastically things would change without these freedoms they treat

so cavalierly, what it would be like to need government approval to use

the Internet, buy a firearm, take a trip, watch a movie or read these

very words.

 

If that sounds alarmist, consider again the experience at Little Falls,

where an agent of the government literally read over a man's shoulder,

Big Brother-like, and tried to prevent him from seeing what he had

chosen to see.

 

The fact that we are at war doesn't make that OK. The fact that we are

panicked doesn't make it OK. The allegation that the material is

unsavory doesn't make it OK.

 

Look, freedom is a messy business. It is also a risky business. But it

means nothing if we surrender it at every hint of messiness and risk.

That's cowardly, and it's un-American.

 

You'd think we'd have learned that lesson after the Sedition Act of

1918, the excesses of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the surveillance of the

Rev. Martin Luther King. But apparently the lesson requires constant

relearning. And vigilance.

 

So thank you to the Little Falls library for having the guts to say:

Hell no. Some things should never happen in freedom's land.

 

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for The Miami Herald. His column

appears Sundays in The Sun. His e-mail is lpitts.

 

Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun

 

Source: The Baltimore Sun

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/

oped/bal-op.newpitts19feb19,0,5013268.story

 

 

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