Friday, April 25, 2003
Paying Attention
”The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” Time to start paying attention here at home, again, and support the booksellers and librarians who are almost single-handedly challenging restrictions on the right to read stemming from the PATRIOT act.(Thank you, Moorish Girl, ‘Literary Life’ section) I don’t know about you, but a book gathering place, be it store, library, or my own upstairs room is about my favorite place on earth. I want to read anything and everything. And I don’t want anyone looking over my shoulder making judgements on my habits. Or your habits. Or even Donald Rumsfeld’s habits.The threat, according to booksellers and librarians, comes from the federal government and a provision of the USA Patriot Act in Section 215 that authorizes the FBI to obtain "certain business records" based on warrants from secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts, which under changes instituted by USA Patriot do not require that the government show probable cause.”Secret courts?” “Not required to show probable cause?!” Yeah. What’s a constitution? And then, after they get the records of what one reads, the bookseller, or library is legally forbidden to tell anyone about it. Anyone – not just the lack-of-probable-cause accused. Anyone.
Judith Krug of the American Library Association said the law not only threatens First Amendment rights, it undermines the ability of Americans to be responsible citizens by creating a sense of fear about seeking information the administration might not want them to have.Didn’t we just go to a lot of trouble to overthrow a régime who sat on the other end of this particular continuum? This is America! We don’t take kindly to any “sense of fear” of our government ‘round here.
Ms Krug’s point is key to the whole argument:
"It is in my mind the most important right we enjoy in the Constitution, because without …free access to information we do not have what we need to govern ourselves. Any attempt to withhold information and ideas from the American public strikes right at the heart of this Constitutional republic."That is it. Knowledge is the antidote to fear. Knowledge, the ability to know when you don’t know enough, and the willingness to seek further knowledge is the key to being a citizen. Otherwise you’re just a consumer; a giant, pointless maw into which useless goods disappear. Kind of like a landfill.
There is some opposition to this travesty of the Constitution:
A bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., last month to exempt libraries and booksellers from the provisions of Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The bill has "about 70 co-sponsors, including a half-dozen Republicans," Sanders' chief of staff, Jeff Weaver said.An effort worth supporting. But I note it only excludes libraries and booksellers. What other businesses are open to this secret, without-probable-cause examination? Do I now have to monitor my hardware store purchases? Wonder if I am buying the wrong kind of fertilizer at the nursery? Wrong hair color? (not that I do…) Wrong food items? Too much wine? Too little Jack Daniels?
No, no, no. This kind of thinking is what people in other countries have to do. You know, countries whose governments are called “régimes.”
”He who is willing to give up liberty in exchange for security deserves neither.”
Update: A chill up my spine
So I finish writing the above and randomly pick one of my favorite daily reads. Hossein Derakhshan, a professional journalist, blogs from Iran:Now after three years, everything has changed. People don't tend to buy papers, don't like to talk politics and don't like the man they voted anymore. …Although many of them are free now, but virtually none of them are politically active. Since then, hardliners have made up huge files, containing every possible accusation they might have come up, for about every possible man or women who might have been of a little influence on the society, by his or her thoughts, writings, speeches and actions.Stay your course. Blog on.
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