The Case Of Reasonable v Unreasonable

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The Case Of Reasonable v Unreasonable

By Brooks A. Mick, M.D.
Dec. 24, 2005

A question now debated interminably in the media is the supposed dichotomy between civil liberties and the prevention of terrorist attacks. It could be paraphrased rather accurately as “just how much freedom does a terrorist in Afghanistan have to speak with someone in Houston or Chicago?”

It could also be formulated as “just how are my civil liberties harmed by the government’s eavesdropping on a conversation between a terrorist in Afghanistan and someone in Houston or Chicago?”

Often one hears a supporter the terrorists’ right to hold their conversations free from detection or someone who describes himself as a civil libertarian quote Benjamin Franklin, saying “He who gives up freedom for security deserves neither.”

But Benjamin Franklin didn’t say that. It is a misquote, leaving out important phrasing. What Old Ben actually said was, “"those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty or Safety."

I note the qualifier, “essential.” I also note the qualifiers “little temporary.” I would submit that the liberty of a terrorist in Afghanistan to speak to someone freely in Chicago is not an “essential” liberty. I also note that preventing Chicago from being vaporized by a nuclear device is not a “little temporary” safety.

Some might worry that the government would abuse its ability to spy on terrorists. Indeed, in the past, the government did abuse power, and it might again. But we have no report of the current administration’s abuse of power. George W. Bush, unlike Bill Clinton, has not had the IRS audit his enemies. Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore, unlike Clinton paramours Gennifer Flowers and Liz Ward Gracen, sexual assault accusers Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick, and fired White House Travel Office Director Billy Dale, have not been audited. It should be noted that these Clinton enemies’ IRS audits were not random, but ordered, and the IRS has admitted it. According to court documents made public in April, 2002, an official with the Internal Revenue Service admitted that legal opponents of former President Bill Clinton were singled out for tax audits.

On the other hand, Bush enemies get invited to the White House for talks.

I also note that those legal scholars who maintain there is a right to privacy in the Constitution have not yet shown exactly where this lies. There is, to be sure, the right to freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, and to security in one’s person and papers. But wherein is there a right to privacy? Surely searching and seizing are not the same as privacy, and persons and papers are not the same as conversations, those held in person, verbally, or those held through the mediation of electrons and photons. As much as I like privacy, I have to disagree with those like the recent author of a piece on Amendment IV in the Free Lance-Star of Fredericksburg, VA. To find a right to privacy in the Constitution, one has to stretch the meaning of the actual phrases considerably. On the other hand, earlier in the series on the Bill of Rights, that same newspaper gave a remarkably clear and explicit and strict discussion of the wording of Amendment II.

Would that such strict application of the rules of the English language be applied to all the Constitution and its amendments.

The Case of Reasonable v Unreasonable may, in fact, be going to court, to the US Supreme Court, where it may be decided, in the person of Padilla, the accused bomb-plotter. The courts seem determined to take it on. And the Bush Administration should be equally determined to make their case.

http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2005/122005/12082005/141954

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007720

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About the author Brooks A. Mick: Physician, still practicing medicine but retired from the US Army. Write just for the fun of it, but working on novel in the vein of Tom Clancy's politico-military genre.

Email: brooks15@cox.net

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