Managing Risk

After the Twin Towers went down, there was a lot of legislating of new security powers for governments and police. Civil libertarians complained, and there was talk of police states etc. One of the most popular counter-arguments went something like this: "this is a serious situation, and there's no more important right than the right to life. We can't afford these luxuries at a time like this."

This is bunk; major civil liberties like the right to a fair trial are not modern innovations tacked on in a time of peace and plenty. These are rights that our ancestors were prepared to fight for, at a time when they were well familiar with serious external threats. People who think the twin towers was a vast catastrophe should look back on some of the things that happened to their ancestors. The reason they were prepared to fight for them is that they were also well familiar with what happens when governments start violating them. And they preferred to face the external threats.

One of the standard quotes used in these fights is Benjamin Franklin's: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin was part of a group who took on one of the world's super-powers in a military conflict and won, so he cannot be accused of being naive about safety.

It is often discussed as though it meant that you could trade liberty for safety, and that those who chose to do so - who chose to live on their knees instead of dying on their feet - were undeserving of either. But Franklin has used two important words in here: "essential" and "temporary". I read this as something more important - you can't trade liberty for safety, and if you try you will lose the liberty without gaining the safety.

To illustrate this, consider the number of people who have been killed by terrorists in recent years. And compare that with the numbers killed by their own governments - in Pinochet's Chile, Galtieri's Argentina, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Burma under the generals, Hitler's Germany (and here only consider the German citizens he had killed), Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Amin's Uganda, and all the countless other examples I haven't room for.

Which way is the risk balanced? Sure, the US probably won't turn into a dictatorship soon. But one major reason for that is all the people who will protest and fight long before it comes close. Protest now, while it's legal, instead of waiting until you can be shot for it. And would you not rather fight an external threat, with the help of your friends and neighbours, than have those same people help the police cart you off as a threat to public order?

Human society is made up of the fallible and the greedy and the manically controlling, here as well as in those other countries. It will never be safe; but you can manage the risk by demanding that governments justify themselves, completely and continually, before they get to lock anyone away or restrict their actions.