If It Isn't Sufficient Anymore?
Here was a paragraph in the NYT last week that hit me hard:

“The old categories no longer apply,” Mr. Schäuble said in an interview with the magazine Der Spiegel. “We have to clarify whether our constitutional state is sufficient for confronting the new threats.”
--Link

It is a quote from Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's top security official. He is speaking in the midst of a debate going on within Germany about what the new terrorist threats mean and how to prepare for them. Look again at the second sentence:

whether our constitutional state is sufficient...

Actually these words came as he was giving suggestions about what could be done to lessen threats. He feels that

Germany should consider detaining potential terrorists and sanctioning the killing of terrorist leaders abroad.

Mr. Schäuble, a conservative politician who is the country’s interior minister, also said that the police should be allowed to conduct clandestine searches of private computers by way of the Internet, a practice now forbidden.

--Link

My first reaction was "Thank goodness they are having the debate before they lose their rights." But my thinking then went toward the deeper philosophical-political issues, the whole process, and threat, and what it could mean to what we have understood in the West as freedom and democracy.

If a constitutional democracy cannot maintain its democracy and freedoms when faced with such a threat, democracy is far more fragile than we would have believed. If democracy and our constitutional government can only survive when there are no threats like Al-Qaeda, then why have so many died protecting it? That, for me, was the scariest thought. Somehow or another I believe that a free democratic country that will always protects the rights of its citizens can survive. Will there be those who utilize the "system" for their own ill-conceived ends? Of course. Politicians have done that for years. So have businesses and criminals. It has to work or we have been built on a lie. And I for one do not believe we have been built on a lie.

The lie comes when we think we should have to give up some of our basic rights and freedoms because someone is threatening us. The lie comes when we think that the government has the "right" to do whatever is necessary to protect us- even take away our basic rights. I fear that we might someday we may be looking at a document called the Constitution and shake our heads in sadness as we say that we had to ignore it to save it.

Kind of like that village in Vietnam that had to be destroyed to save it.

That is not freedom at work. That is not the constitution that we rightly hold so high. I know, I know. If I'm not doing anything wrong why should I be afraid? Well, it all depends on who makes the list of what's right and wrong. Those who made it to Nixon's enemies list were simply upholding democracy and expressing their opinions freely. That did not make them enemies of the state. The line is much too thin- vanishingly thin at times- between having freedom and having it taken away.

I hope that next year's election will include some honest and in-depth debate on this issue. There is a great deal at stake- not the least of which is 225+ years of people fighting and dying to keep us free.