Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 6)

 [Continued from Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 5). sch 3/26/23.]

 Am I wrong in how I estimate my fellow Americans? Think carefully, what goes through your head when you read me. What are the true answers you keep to yourself when you reach one of my questions? What facts support your ideas? Have you double-checked those facts?

Or scrape all away to your base principles. What is the purpose of government? Read The Declaration of Independence before answering that question. I think the Declaration is more invoked than enforced by our politicians and pundits.

I worry too many have been rendered idiots by reading Atlas Shrugged. Selfishness running rampant elevated to a philosophy and a cult. Ayn Rand lets in Thomas Hobbes and throws out John Locke. Natural rights usurped by power.

Consider C.S. Lewis's comments on natural law from his Mere Christianity:

This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it... But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human idea of decent behavior was obvious to every one... If they were, then all the things we said about war were nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced?

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... The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set them up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials 'for the sake of humanity,' and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.

So, be careful what you ask for: freedom and security are in opposition to one another. Prefer security to freedom long enough, and you will get a more subtle Big Brother. It will be a Big Brother transcending party preference. It will be a Big Brother elected to office and kept in office by the electorate. Unless, that is, the electorate shows some gumption by embracing the uncertainty of freedom more than the rigidity of security. 

Once more from Measure for Measure:

LUCIO

    A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in
    him: something too crabbed that way, friar.

DUKE VINCENTIO

    It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it.

LUCIO

    Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred;
    it is well allied: but it is impossible to extirp
    it quite, friar, till eating and drinking be put
    down....

At some point, we must recognize the impossibility of removing vice. I think anyone thinking the annihilation of vice a possibility indulges in fantasy and/or blasphemous hubris. We can use the government to regulate vice. We can use public opinion to discourage vice. We can punish those who use their freedom to injure the person or liberty of another. That is the best we can do in dealing with vice. C.S. Lewis makes this point:

... If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get better comfort or truth - only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with, and, in the end, despair.

Mere Christianity ("We Have Cause to be Uneasy").

I take looking for comfort equates with putting security over freedom.

sch 

[Continued in Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 7. sch 3/26/23).]