Walls
On Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way
A man stands tall and proud. He stands on a podium, addressing the people.
The attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable. We will not repeat the mistakes of other generations—appeasing or excusing tyranny, and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability.
Meanwhile, at home, some sacrificing is going on.
A cowboy stands in front of the courts, on trial for not producing his identification at the whim of a police officer investigating an investigation. He loses. Once he had the right to remain silent. Once, the law needed probable cause. No more.
A television mogul stands in front of the courts, on trial for lying. Not lying under oath: lying to investigators on a witch hunt, about an act that is not a crime at all. We know you committed no crime, they say, but lying about the noncrime is obstructing justice. She goes to jail. She should have stayed silent. (Unless they asked her for identification.)
A bill stands before the senate, entitled “Emergency Supplemental Appropriations” bill. It is a bill that will get ammunition to the troops fighting on behalf of the country. No one will oppose this bill. It is too important not to pass. But inside this bill lives another one—an unrelated one that would require in a machine-readable national ID card for all its citizens. This second bill is highly contentious, but no politician with half a mind can vote to withhold ammunition from the troops. Everybody knows this. So, later today, when the vote is finally taken, it will pass.
What’s on this machine-readable card? For now, the citizen’s name. The citizen’s picture. The citizen’s signature. The citizen’s address, and the citizen’s national ID number. But the Secretary of Homeland Security has the right to change these requirements later. So later in the name of security, it may include the citizen’s fingerprints, the citizen’s retinal scan, or the citizen’s DNA fingerprint.
But the really, really interesting part is the bill that lives inside the ID card provision, which lives inside the must-pass military spending bill.
It’s a little law that allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to build walls—barriers and roads along national barriers. A little provision that allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive all laws—at his own discretion and without judicial review—regarding these barriers. A tiny little law that opens an enormous constitutional can of worms: the first ever declaration that a law is free from judicial review—a never-before invoked clause in the previously free country’s constitution that allows the government to pass laws that may not be ruled unconstitutional. No one has ever dared invoke the clause before.
They dare today.
When the big bill, with the little bill inside, with the littler bill inside all that passes, the Secretary of Homeland Security of the formerly-free country will be above all laws when it comes to barriers at the borders. Every citizen of the formerly free country will be required to carry a machine-readable card with their personal information on it, which they will be required to present to any official who asks for it, or they will go to jail. And when questioned, every citizen will tell the whole truth at all times, whether innocent or guilty, or they will go to jail. If they’re really, really unlucky, they’ll go to a jail built on the border, or in another country, where no laws will protect them at all.
A man stands tall and proud. He stands on a podium, addressing the people. Meanwhile, at home, the man’s country is building walls. To keep his people inside.
His people are afraid.
kj · PDDCCIII
May 10th, 2005 at 5:24 pm
Good post, I hate this bill. I can see our freedoms rolling back. Punish the terrorists, not the citizens of the US.
May 10th, 2005 at 10:15 pm
It’s especially horrifying being the outsider, looking in. You just want to grab a random U.S. Citizen off the street, shake them by the shoulders and scream: “Don’t you SEE?”
May 11th, 2005 at 12:51 am
Well played. I see and I wonder. I wonder what it’ll be like to have to make my home in a foreign land because my country has drifted so far from the freedoms which used to define it. Here’s hoping it all works out better than we think… I kind of like it here after all (’cept for this BS of course)
May 11th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
From s^2:
It’s not so bad. We serve a pretty mean IPA on Tuesdays.
May 11th, 2005 at 4:44 pm
Well it passed, bye bye moving through the country freely… :(
May 12th, 2005 at 4:02 pm
Without a bang. Without even a whimper. In fact, it didn’t make the papers here at all.
Way to go dead-tree journalism.
May 30th, 2005 at 12:53 am
Dude, I don’t know any of you, But i thought “kj”’s post really said it. It seems that americans are really unaware of whats happening in D.C. This could result in a small % of the population (or companies)with a disporpotiante share of wealth to “help” pass laws that no one bothers to read.
June 7th, 2005 at 10:06 am
Well written Kjell, but you ignore the key point. You only know about the events and the law with its buried bombs because of an active and critical press, that is the cornerstone of a democratic society. So long as the press, for whatever partisan reason, continues to search out the stupid or dishonest or just plain cynical opportunists, and to make the story widely available in the press or blogs or whatever, the system works. Humans actually are venal, stupid, self serving etc and always have been. The trick in getting them all pointed in one direction for the common good without crushing them in a dictorial state is very difficult, but the American system, for all its faults, actually works. I agree that there is always a danger that fascism will raise its ugly head but the best defence is an active, critical, independent press.
You may want to consider our own humble dominion, where we seem to have given up these freedoms entirely and most people don’t seem to notice the disappearance of the critical press. The siren song of socialism makes all incremental abuses acceptable so long as entitlements appear to increase. Witness the polls that indicate that criminals in office are better than a “hidden agenda” and that spin is preferrable to hard journalism.(The conventional wisdom today is that “they all do it and I am tired of the wrangling so lets just shut up”
Regards
An old hacker
June 7th, 2005 at 9:16 pm
Hiya Bob! Thanks for visiting our little corner of the world.
Truth be told, I hadn’t thought about the press issue much until I talked to you recently. An independent press is indeed the important check (or balance) in the system.
And our press is indeed bad—and hardly independent.
But I fear, looking southward, that the American press is taking a page out of our books, and not vice-versa. I see the press becoming increasingly less free (concentration in the hands of a few key corporations), and more involved in the political process. Recent games at the White House only serve to underscore this, with the wholesale purchase of various columnists and “reporters” for the purpose of what can only be viewed as state-sponsored propaganda.
The solution, however, may well be at hand. For all their faults, blogs are beginning to make an impact on the traditional media. And though hardly a replacement as yet, the ability for anyone and everyone to publish to a global audience, regardless of bankroll, has to be viewed as a good thing—and possibly the important check (or balance) to keep the traditional media honest.
July 5th, 2005 at 11:25 am
Excellent, that was really well explained and helpful
February 9th, 2006 at 8:24 am
who would have the balls to start an independent press for the country they live in?