Whose Liberty is at Stake?

Those in power have always confused criticism of the government with threats to national security. This government has been no different. A flurry of blog activity, at Tiny Revolution, Digby, and editorial activity by Glenn Greenwald at Salon, has noted that the National Intelligence Estimate, which has become a national issue after suggesting the terrorist threat has increased, contains a less noticed passage about who counts as potential terrorist suspects. The now notorious passage says:

"Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests. The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age."

The Senate just passed a bill today that permitted treating certain American citizens as enemy combatants, nearly eradicated the civil rights of enemy combatants, and also expanded the category of persons who can be classified as enemy combatants. Put the two together, and one can see why various people on the left are feeling anxious. Indeed, Digby couldn't resist quoting Pastor Martin Niemoller's famous poem about the Nazis, and their progressive eradication of different levels of German society, each indifferent to the other's fate.

Is Bush's SS waiting in the wings to swoop down on the wide swaths of the left? In fact, while there have indeed been some authoritarian extensions of police powers against left-wing groups in the past years, including surveillance of marches, use of brutal tactics against protestors, and greater limitations of free speech, what is noticeable is the relative *lack* of such repressive measures against the 'left' broadly conceived. During World War I, the government shut down thousands of left-wing presses, swept up hundreds of left-wing leaders, and made public criticism of the war illegal, producing some of the most famous first amendment cases in our history. We know how devastating the McCarthy Era was, not just at the national level, but at the state and local level, as thousands of left-wingers and non-conformists were purged from public and private employment, media censored, political association directly criminalized, and domestic spying extensive. Compared to these episodes, what's striking is how non-threatening recent developments are.

The point is not to endorse what is going on. Anyone who reads this blog knows where we stand. However, the point is to try to suggest a different avenue of criticism from what is currently offered - ie, 'next, they're going to come for the left-wing radicals'. For the real lesson of Niemoller's poem about the Nazis, inappropriate as it is for our times, is not that others failed to take account of each prior group's loss of liberty, but rather that those groups failed politically. They failed to demonstrate how everyone's liberty is at stake even if there is little to no threat that the vast majority of (Americans) will be directly threatened by the application of state power. This is the argument that the 'left' has to make. It has to show how the 'liberty-security tradeoff' that the administration offers - dramatic limitation of the liberty of a few, for the security of the many - means no liberty at all.

Winning that argument is harder. It means attacking not just specific policies, but also countering the political logic behind them. That often requires using abstract arguments that might seem removed from the immediate, urgent demands of political engagement. But it is false to oppose abstract argument and direct policy criticism. They depend on each other. For example, in this case, the best argument is not that a few lefties might end up in Guantanamo, it's that nobody is free when they think about their freedom in the way the administration wants them to. Bush et al. want us to think about our freedom entirely in a private, isolated way - as a kind of freedom of choice we enjoy in our personal lives. We all recall how Bush, when asked after 9/11 how best to demonstrate American confidence and freedom, suggested that citizens go shopping and continue travel. For the Administration, private acts of consumption came closest to expressing their account of liberty. The flip-side of thinking about freedom in this way is using the government to protect us from all those social and environmental threats that might interfere with our private freedom. This means looking at other people primarily as threats or at least potential dangers, rather than as a condition for our own freedom. It also means believing that we remain free even while other citizens lose their freedom. That can't be right. We are only free if we live in a society that is really organized around securing everyone's freedom, not ensuring that they are protected from every possible risk. Our society seems to think our public institutions should be about security, and only our private life about freedom. But, since we really live our life in public - at work, in politics, even in the home - that means we really don't live a free life. Can we develop as free beings, develop to our full potential, if our first priority is to protect ourselves from others? If we really want to live in a free society, don't we have to accept that degree of risk that comes with allowing everyone their freedom? After all, we only really experiment with new ideas, new ways of living, new kinds of knowledge when everyone, or at least most, are open to such experimentation.

This is all simply to say that everyone's liberty is at stake in recent events, not because everyone might get thrown in Gitmo, but because these new bills are about trying to redefine our collective expectations, demands, and desires.