When I am losing badly at a game, I often joke that I am only giving my opponent a false sense of security, and when he drops his guard, I will take advantage of that and kick butt. The truth of the situation is that his guard is not up and I am simply losing. The other side of this coin is the notion that extraordinary measures are keeping us safe when they are not.
Here in New York City, we are about to elect Bill DeBlasio as our new mayor. In the Democratic primary, he came out most aggressively against the NYPD's "stop-and-frisk" policy that has been ruled unconstitutional. For the general election, his opponent, Republican Joe Lhota, is portraying the end of "stop-and-frisk" as a return to the lawlessness of the '70's. Nothing could be further from the truth! Violent crime in New York dropped precipitously long before we imposed the aggressive tactics. Improvement since has been marginal at best.
More baloney below the fold.
I'm sure many of you have been through airport security. In addition tot he metal detectors, we now have full body scanners. We take our shoe off. I would remind you that 19 men armed with nothing more than pocket knives and box cutters were able to hijack 4 airplanes. Those knives should not have made it through either the metal detectors or the x-ray machines.
I would remind you, too, that the federal government has admitted knowing that Al-Qaeda wanted to hijack planes. They've done more to stop Obamacare than they did to prevent hijackings. For the record, the Mexicans did not make me take my shoes off when I returned from Cancun two years ago.
Eric Snowden's revelations on NSA spying are not new. They are also not necessary. There is absolutely no reason for the government to track every e-mail, cell phone call, and every cookie on every browser. In the aftermath of the enactment of the Patriot Act, I e-mailed then Attorney General John Ashcroft that I had gone to Barnes and Noble and purchased "The Communist Manifesto," "Mein Kampf." "The Koran," and "The Anarchist's Cookbook." Nobody ever showed up.
You're probably tired of hearing Ben Franklin's exhortation that he who would sacrifice Liberty for security deserves neither. The reason he wrote that is because he knew it was a false choice. Liberty is an unalienable right, and government's job is to secure that right. Just like life. Government can't secure my life, but it can secure my right to it. I will die someday. Until that happens secure my unalienable right to Liberty.
Any sense that I can be safer by sacrificing my liberty is false, and as Stephen Colbert might say, that's the word.