Desperate Times, Desperate Measures
A Fall From Freedom
by Mike Molaro

	It's an old idea. One that continues to play out today. In times of war nations have the tendency to become more powerful. The citizens of the state feel fear. Whether or not this fear is of a legitimate enemy or the result of war propaganda is inconsequential of the civil liberties the citizens of the state are willing to sacrifice for their security. Those hesitant to give up these liberties are hounded by authority, attacked by government-run media outlets, and eventually victims of the rule of law that changes around them. During a war or crises the government demands new authoritative powers in order to better protect that nation from its enemy. The history of the United States alone documents the validity of this theory, and  a look at the history of other nations solidifies it furthermore. In popular writing this idea at least dates back to 1517 when Machiavelli wrote "The Prince" in which he promotes the necessity for war and cruelty in order to sustain the powers of the state.
	In U.S. history we see this played out as early as the civil war. Abraham Lincoln set aside habeus corpus when John Merryman was attempting to prevent Union troops from mobilizing by destroying bridges. Instead of being sent to a court of law for his offences Lincoln ordered a military general to hold him at Fort McHenry without trial for treason. Eventually, Roger Taney, a Supreme Court justice, tracked him down and had him released. 
	In World War I Wilson and congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act in 1918. Any expression casting doubt on the American war effort was not only censored and banned from publication and the U.S. post, but it was even punishable by lengthy prison sentences typically ranging from 5 to 20 years. William Edenborn was imprisoned for giving a speech in which he simply spoke of the administration exaggerating the threat of Germany. Many socialists were imprisoned for saying that what the Germans had done to the Belgiums was no worse than what the U.S. had done in the Philippines. Others were imprisoned for speaking out against the draft. It's clear the act was enforced on people who posed no violent threat whatsoever. The act was used to quell anyone the authority deemed a threat to their ideas, values, or their war propaganda. 
	The U.S. continued and heightened this trend in World War II. Approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans were uprooted from their homes and forced into interment camps. These were not Japanese tourists temporarily held. Most were U.S. citizens born in the U.S. and many whom had parents and grandparents born in the U.S. These U.S. citizens were detained from the end of 1942 until the beginning of 1945. When released from the camps they were at best given $25 and a train ticket home. $25 for two years stolen from their lives, unbearable hardships only to return 'home' to possibly no home at all.
	What leaves the WWII scenario so harrowing is its close proximity to us in history. This did not happen several hundred years ago in some unstable third world country. This happened in one of the most free societies on earth just 70 years ago. Time and time again a nation's perceived threat of danger creates a more authoritarian form of government at the expense of individuals' civil rights. Either freedom is sacrificed for security, or freedom is stripped under the guise of security. For better or for worse, this is the reality of a country at war. 
	To draw a comparison, we can imagine a parent confining their child to the house for bad behavior. The child was knowingly befriending a bad seed or troublemaker so the parent decides to sacrifice the child's freedom through confinement. The parent thinks the child's new restraints will protect it from the outside and potentially damaging new friend. In this context we can completely understand the parent's actions. The parent has a vast amount of knowledge over an uneducated child who has not entered into the age of reason. However, we must admit to the enormous fault in this logic when we extend it  to governmental restraint on a people in times of war. And perhaps this brings us to the crux of the matter: Are citizens children? Is the government our mommy? How far has our welfare/warfare state gone that it is now able to change our code of moral values? We have come to let the system treat us like children. This is nothing short of a people admitting an intellectual and moral inferiority to their high and mighty elected officials. We have allowed ourselves to become the unknowing, unreasonable child, and our elected officials are the all knowing, authoritative, protective parent. This is a tragedy. It is accepting a lower morality, a more base value system, and a less just code of law. Even a completely benevolent government should never be given the power to change the basic principles of religious and constitutional law. Do we now disagree with Thomas Jefferson to such an extent that we hold no truths to be self-evident? This is far from freedom and not as far as we may think from totalitarianism. It is a moral relativity determined by a tiny minority. 
In 1940 Friedrich Hayek warned of these very dangers in "Road to Serfdom". His words seem just as relevant today as they might have to a reader during and in the aftermath of WWII. Hayek speaks with clarity and conviction and regards the socialist society as one that inevitably leads to tyranny. Although the U.S. is a republic, we can be honest to admit that it is not a free capitalist society just as it is not a fascist dictatorship. Admitting this and without digressing into a discussion on the current political state of America we can still learn deeply from Hayek's argument. It's important to understand that Hitler came to power not through total brute force. He came to power gradually, through elections, through propaganda, and through utilizing a public's fear of economic ruin and national destruction from internal and external forces. Hitler knew the ideas of Machiavelli and he understood the buckling of liberty under the pressure of war. He was quick to manipulate public fear and quick to exaggerate the nation's threats. 
It is also important to remember how many German people went along with Hitler before, up to, and through his Nazi reign. Hitler was a long time in the making. It was a changing value, moral code, and ideology of the German people that paved the way for someone like Hitler. It was the acceptance of nationalism by the mass public. Nationalism decrees that the state knows best. Nationalism demands that it is the citizens' duty to act and work in order to benefit the nation, which in turn has the wisdom and kindness to benefit the entirety of society. It was this logic and reasoning that allowed Hitler to reign. Unfortunately, Hayek points out many people do not understand this. No matter how threatening or menacing Hitler and his followers were, it would have been absolutely impossible for him to gain his position of power by force. He simply did not have enough manpower. Hitler legally catapulted himself into power through his use of a powerful nationalistic rhetoric that manipulated a population which had already allowed its code of values and morals to be rested not in the concept of individualism, but in the state.
I will admit this to be slightly sensational. I don't mean to lose a reader or scare one into believing the 4th Reich is coming to America. However, I do intend to highlight that the door is not completely shut to tyranny and totalitarianism in America. If these ideas interest you at all I highly recommend Hayek's "Road to Serfdom". For the sake of the current argument, we can leave behind Hayek and note that although there are vast differences of time, place, people and politics between 1940s Germany and the U.S. there is one deep connecting thread, and that is the way in which a debasement of morality (through completely legal means) takes place when a governmental power is left unchecked during times of war. 
It is not easy to make sense of history. As a 21st century man it's difficult for me to read a history book and not feel like it took place in some distant galaxy a long, long time ago. I suppose that's why it is said to inevitably repeat itself. So what will repeat? It has been over ten years since the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. has already revisited the nearly 100 year old Wilsonian ideas by passing into law the Patriot Act and the lesser discussed 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution, which gives the President indefinite detention authority. Though not as aggressive in undermining the public's freedom of speech and press as the Espionage and Sedition Act were, these new acts are worse for at least one critical reason: they have been a part of law now for more than ten years. As much as one may disagree with Wilson and views his laws as attacks on personal liberties, at least he had the decency to remove the bills from law three years later when WWI came to an end. The Patriot Act not only undermines personal liberty, but it stands through three terms and two presidencies. It has been revised and prolonged through both a republican and democratic president of whom most of the public believes are very opposing political figures. 
Furthermore, many are unaware of our nation's 2012 new year's resolution. On January 1st our President Barrack Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This Act contains sections that make the Patriot Act seem trivial. Now U.S. citizens suspected of "belligerence" can be labeled an "enemy combatant" and treated the same as a military enemy. No longer are we in the U.S. protected by habeas corpus, our right to a trial, but we can literally be whisked away in the middle of the night by the military without warning, warrant, or apparent reason. We can be brought to Guantanamo Bay where we can be held indefinitely, tortured, and murdered. I can understand the reader's disbelief who hasn't uncovered into this news yet (makes you wonder why it was passed on New Year's Day to a mainly distracted public on holiday). I urge you to take a closer look. Constitutional lawyers, republicans, democrats, libertarians, and the ACLU have all been outspoken and outraged about the language, unconstitutionality and immorality of the NDAA. 
It's sad that the majority of the public will be quick to defend the Patriot Act and the NDAA simple by pointing out that the Acts have not affected them. However, it is always easier to note tyranny in hindsight. Was the majority of the public aware of the socialists, pacifists, and patriots opposed to war being arrested during WWI under the Sedition Act? Is the public now currently aware of the hundreds of names of detainees, their supposed crimes, or how long they are being held without trial at Guantanamo Bay? Of course, not. We are unaware of who is being wiretapped, who is being watched, who's homes are 'legally' being broken into without warrant, who is being searched, seized, detained, tortured, and murdered. We know not who, nor are we given any reasons or evidence. This kind of lawful-lawlessness makes everyone suspect, and everyone guilty until proven innocent. Again, the public can be likened to being an ignorant child under a paranoid parent rather than a free individual beneath only the moon and sun. The "I've got nothing to hide" defense is an inexcusable fallacy. At the onset of WWII did the majority of the 110,000 Americans have anything to hide except for the fact that they were of Japanese descent?
During the times of the Civil War Lincoln's threat was paramount. His country was in an all out civil war. It was U.S. citizens aiming guns at point blank range at other U.S. citizens. The threat of ruin, collapse, and national destruction was starring him in the face. More U.S. citizens died during the civil war than any other. In a dire situation one can argue the Lincoln's reasoning for suspending habeas corpus. However, today The United States has declared a war on 'terror'. We have declared war on a method of war, or on a concept. This is a war that can never end in success regardless of how much funding, fighting, bombing, and destruction of liberties at home.  We can eliminate supposed terrorists, but will this not strike up new hatred and new terrorists? 
I'm nervous to note that perhaps this is exactly the aim. Is it not a possibility that certain politicians and those in bed with politicians (whether it be through lobbying, corporate, or financial interests) might want the country to be continuously threatened? It was Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, and others who were notoriously known for using fear and force as a means to achieve their ends. Of course, there are other political leaders who have maintained a country at war with less force and lawlessness, but were these war powers still not to the personal benefits of Lincoln, Wilson, FDR and their administrations? We can argue volumes on whether the Sedition Act or Interment camps made the country safer and concluded the wars quicker, but what we absolutely can not deny is that these attacks on liberty created a more powerful and authoritative central government. 
Recently, our state of war has inspired President Barak Obama to fly an unmanned predator drone over Yemen to kill three U.S. citizens Anwar Al Awlaki, his son Abdulrahman, and Samir Khan. The New York Times was flabbergasted and the ACLU has filed a lawsuit against Obama. To understand how our president has the authority to kill three U.S. citizens without showing evidence, giving warning, or producing a trial is to understand our predicament. These acts are those of dictators, kings, and tyrants, yet for some reason they are happening, mostly unchallenged, in a supposedly free republic.
We stand today as a very confused nation. The American public is unaware or has forgotten that Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden were funded, trained, and armed by the CIA. We have military bases in over 130 countries and have recently made aggressions against Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and Iran to name a few. Yet, our congress and president refuse to go through the constitutional process of declaring wars. We are waging an unwinnable war on concept of terror and it seems as though the right of government to indefinitely detain has become a law indefinitely. The war powers are being sustained as we are making warfare our permanent state. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and it seems that the current political system wants all times to be desperate times so that it can perpetually and legally utilize what desperate measures it so desires. 
What does this mean and what can we do? The majority of people would agree on one if not several of these: political corruption is rampant, lobbyists and special interests too powerful, the distribution of wealth too unfair, the two party system is flawed, the amount of money needed to successfully campaign impossibly high, the tax system is unfair, the richer are getting richer and the poor poorer. It is possible to pinpoint these ailments' causes, but more difficult is coming up with a solution a varied public can agree upon. I think what we all can admit, and I believe this to be a good starting point, is that we have created a government that is a class in and of its own. We have the poor, the middle class, the upper class, and we have the political class. Whether they are your 'elites', 'globalists', 'croney capitalists', 'socialists', 'commies', or plain and simple 'a-holes', we all seem to agree they are distinctly different than citizens. Needless to say, we have many hardworking, well-meaning, honest politicians. However, these politicians must make a conscious effort to avoid lobbyists, compromise, and group think. The default is for them to fall in line with their class. 
It seems clear that when government can grow, government will grow. Few will argue that government does a lot more than governing in the U.S. today. Is it a stretch to say that a big powerful government with massive oversight and spending capability produces a desire for a certain class of people to develop within it and seek to wield its powers and wealth? Is it baseless to say that perhaps immoral people seek positions of power so that they may use that power to their advantage? Are the well meaning politicians not left between a rock and a hard place constantly tempted by pay offs, healthy corporate positions, and the pressure of the lobby and their less moral peers? The answer, of course, is not to arm and oust the politicians, for such a maneuver would do nothing but allow for the next set of people to fill the void (that would be like trying to win a war on terror). I am far from blaming politicians, in fact, I think we can hardly blame them. The disease is the power and wealth of federal government, and the disease itself must be removed or it will continue to infect most of the well-meaning politicians who come in contact with it. Why did we ever decide to give the government the money and authority to build and occupy those military bases in 130 countries? Why should any president or congress ever have the ability to take away a citizen's right to trial? Why does one man, elected or not, have the authority to enact no-fly-zones, carpet-bombings, and attacks on foreign nations that pose no immediate threat to our nation? Criminals are criminals no matter what ends they mean to achieve and no matter what holy cause they wrap themselves in. Can I wiretap my neighbor without warrant? Of course, not. When I have a suspicion that he's a terrorist than can I wiretap him? Of course, not. If I wiretap him anyways and I hear him talking badly about Bush, Obama, and an aggressive imperialistic U.S. can I label him a terrorist and kill him? This is absurd because the point I'm trying to make is absurd. These would all be criminal acts. We are citizens under a criminal government.
This does not mean the government is out to get you. It does not mean that the politicians are out to steal every cent you earn. What it does mean is that our system is broken. We have allowed it to become a breathing, money making, and hard acting machine thus potentially capable of severely damaging action. It is possible to end corruption by diminishing the effectiveness of the tools of corruption. In other words, even the most immoral men who make their way into office can do little if their office is little. Is it such a backwards idea to shrink the size of a federal government? Why does the connotation exist in the minds of many that a small Federal Government can not coexist alongside the concepts and deeds of welfare?  Why do many assume that we would somehow be unable to educate our children or feed and cloth the needy? Government does not create money but only redistributes it. Is modern man unable to be moral without his parental government? Are human beings under no income tax somehow incapable of donating money to their neighbor, their friends, their community? Could not state and local authorities be more effective and efficient in solving the problems of education, poverty, crime etc. whereas the federal government has failed? Even where federal programs have succeeded, could we not implement the same policies locally whereas they would remain effective, but avoid the very problem of gargantuan government being a breeding ground for corruption?
These are questions we all need to ponder. The fact that it is hard to come to any solid conclusion with such a massive public of varied opinion only points towards solutions that maximize freedom. It is unfortunate that as Americans we have bought into the Left-Right paradigm. Why do we make it difficult for ourselves to praise a tea party member for their ideas on monetary policy without getting grilled on a social issue? Can we not stand up for a liberal candidates view on homosexuality without having to align ourselves with his policy on foreign aid? It is quite common place today that when you mention the person you will cast your vote on someone else will respond, "Oh, you're voting for a democrat/republican". The vast majority of Americans define and criticize on party lines and few realize this to be a gigantic distraction from the issues. It is about time we started to vote for individuals based on individual ideas instead of letting the worst of them hide behind the party color. Better yet, would be for these elected officials to only vote on the necessary, but very small functions of government. We have become complacent fools trembling under a media fattened threat of terror. It is about time we step up and realize the shadow of our stature dwarfs the government. We are allowing ourselves to be used by government even though it is ours to use. It is there to govern not to rule. 
Whether we have any pretense toward political activism is irrelevant. The political landscape encompasses every landscape. Just because we can't see the landscape of radio, cell phone, and wi-fi waves, does not mean they aren't there bouncing all around us. Ignoring them does not discredit the benefits they are bringing to millions of people, nor does ignoring it decrease the chances of them giving you cancerous tumors. In some ways the analogy is relevant. The ease of using a cell phone is like the ease of giving authority to a central government to solve your problems. The analogy fails because the risk of big government is exponentially more dangerous than the risks involved in cell phone usage. The solutions are just as difficult. Can we go back to communicating by hand and letter? Are we able to abandon our global network of instant gratification in favor of writing more laborious letters to those in our community?  As our language, social networks, and speed of access to information change so do our thoughts and ideas on the world. As we learn so we live. If we begin to long for definite and immediate solutions from our government we must concede more authority to them. Or we can choose instead to burden ourselves and our community with these problems, and to act in a responsible, intelligent, and moral way towards solving them. There exists both the high stakes risk of big government, and the savings of freedom. Freedom is laboring for your dollar, providing for your family, looking out for your neighbor, and taking part in your community to solve its problems. It requires knowledge, action, and a deep responsibility. My vote is to not sacrifice my personal monetary and spiritual wealth. My vote is not to close my eyes to my own personal responsibilities by resting them in the superficial hands of Big Brother. I am an adult and not a child. The solution is in human hands, the hands of the individual as it always has been.