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Dave Farber +1 412 726 9889
...... Forwarded Message .......
From: "Munro, Neil" <NMunro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 11:45:58 -0400
Subj: Your people are growing increasingly worried about a 'police
state.'
For such an educated audience,
they seem to lack any sense of proportion, a sense of history
or an
awareness of human nature.
It's not as if real police states don't exist still; One can fly to
Cuba
quite easily, or to Iran with some difficulty, or even defect to Saudi
Arabia and North Korea. The intrusiveness of their governments, their
indifference to public opinion, their brutality and ruthlessness, are
the
hallmarks of a real police state.
In the US, we are merely enjoying growing inconvenience and annoyance
amid
the perpetual pull and push demanded by our simultaneous desires for
personal autonomy and public safety. This balance will shift back and
forth
as the public and the elites argue over its costs and benefits. Of
course
there will be abuses; The right will complain about too-strict gun
laws,
property seizures and judicial-indifference to politics'
property-grabs,
while the left will complain about public stigma of new lifestyles, of
legislative curbs on personal autonomy, and of expanded police-powers.
But there is no chance that that we will have a police state, even if
Bush
is reelected into perpetuity. The claim is so ludicrous that it is not
worth a counter, but parody.
John Ashcroft thinks you are important enough for him to read your
diary!
The Christian Conservatives have hypnotized the Supreme Court! Tom
Delay is
asking you to buy a gun!
The horror.
Not just parody, but also contempt. Millions of people have died from
police-states over the last 90 years. The communists killed roughly 95
million. The Nazi's destroyed another 50 million. The Japanese
militarists
destroyed at least 30 million. North Korea recently starved one
million of
its own people to death rather than admit internal failure.
Arab autocracies - led by Saddam -- can surely claim to have killed a
million or three. If you want proof, grab a spade and a plane ticket.
And we claim we're living in a police state because of intrusive
luggage
searches? Popular anti-drug laws? A religious Attorney General? The
embarrassment of discovering that a bureaucrat knows you read Noam
Chomsky?
That some tens of people will get jailed for terrorist-plots they did
not
join?
Public safety will inevitably generate errors and burdens, some of
which
are avoidable, and all of which should be minimized. In some
controversies,
the ACLU will be correct. In others, the police and Ashcroft will have
the
public and the law on their side.
But surely the many people who lived and died in real police-states
should,
would and do object to our wrapping ourselves in their terror and
deaths
for our own ends.
Neil
(speaking personally, of course)
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