How much must we give up to be "safe?"

[Clarkie1]

Some will be tempted to seek our security by raising new walls to take the place of shriveled ocean distance. They will call for restricted travel and trade, for tougher visas, fewer tourists and students, closed courts, diminished rights, and less international traffic and trade. They will want an ocean shield and a missile shield, and a society far less open than it was before.

Others will argue, and in my view correctly, that our security depends more on building windows and bridges to the outside world than in building walls. They will suggest that in the new millennium our best security lies in reinforcing others around the world that share our values, rather than shutting ourselves off from them. They will suggest that national security is far broader than national defense, and they will argue that what is ultimately a conflict of ideas and ideals cannot be won by bombs and bullets alone, but must include commitments to human rights and democratic norms.

But where is the balance here? How much must we give up to be safe? And how much will such sacrifices compromise the very freedoms we seek to protect, or the prosperity we have come to enjoy? These are the issues with which you must grapple…they cannot be decided by “experts” and “authorities.” Coming up with the balance will be your responsibility – it cannot be delegated to so-called experts – or given over in trust to elected leaders. Rather, yours is the daily responsibility of citizenship, carried on through open debate and exercised at the ballot box on a hundred different issues and candidacies. And this will require dissent, dissent that cannot be silenced through charges of comforting the enemy without surrendering the very freedoms we say we are fighting for.

-Wes Clark, Seton Hall, 5/13/2002
http://securingamerica.com/node/1030

[AX10]

1. K & R!

[Monkeyman]

2. K&R

[elocs]

3. Just as in V for Vendetta

It will be equal measures of the neocons taking power and the people willing surrendering their rights and freedoms to be ever protected form the terrorist bogeyman. Like the story of the snake and the turtle, they knew full well it was a snake when they let it on their backs. They were and are too afraid and too eager and willing to believe a lie.