First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Rev. Kendyl Gibbons
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
January 20, 2002

Freedom at Risk

Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously to misdoubt her strength. (John Milton)

These are, of course, extraordinary times. Does anyone here feel ordinary? The American psyche suffered a collective shock on September 11; a devastating bereavement, a deeply felt insult, and a cold wind of threat, have passed among us. As we continue the long process of groping toward an understanding of what happened and what it means to us, I want to suggest that we have risen magnificently to the occasion of the bereavement. We have consoled each other in an upwelling of kinship and generosity that is always latent, though not always evident, in the American spirit, of which we may rightly be glad. But as the edges of our common grief wear off, these other intense feelings loom -- and those, I fear, we are not meeting with the same resilience and maturity that was so widely displayed in the first moments of crisis. We have responded to the insult with retribution and a wrathful determination to track down the one person we have decided is responsible for the attacks, even though the people who flew the planes are obviously dust amid the dust of their victims. To what extent such a response is inevitable, or well-advised or proportional, can be and has been the subject of long debate. What I want to consider this morning, as we celebrate the memory of America's great preacher and prophet of justice, Martin Luther King, Jr., and launch our own new program of discovery groups here in this Society, is how both leadership and popular opinion have been swayed by the third dimension of that enormous experience of September 11. Ordinary Americans had the courage to race up the stairs of the burning towers, looking for those in need of help; they had the courage to work the fire hoses and the police radios and the ambulances. The question now is, do we have the kind of courage that it takes to protect our freedom in the face of our fears?

The immediate answers to this question seem ominous. On October 26, the PATRIOT Act (an acronym for the obviously invented title Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) was signed into law. This bill was passed by a congress in the process of closing down in response to the anthrax scare; there was no debate, no amendments were permitted, and the printed text was not available to representatives before the vote. Despite the clear lack of opportunity for thoughtful consideration, this legislation makes changes to over fifteen different federal statutes. It permits the government arbitrarily to detain or deport suspects; to eavesdrop on Internet communications, monitor financial transactions, and obtain individual's electronic records; and to survey clandestinely records of religious and political organizations, and even bookstores. Representative Ron Paul of Texas, one of only three Republicans in the House to vote against the measure, said afterwards, "The insult is to call this a 'patriot bill', and suggest I'm not patriotic because I insisted upon finding out what is in it and voting No. I thought it was undermining the Constitution, so I didn't vote for it -- and therefore I'm somehow not a patriot. That's insulting."

Close on the heels of this alarming development came the President's military order issued on November 13, directing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to create a system of military tribunals at which noncitizens may be prosecuted on charges of terrorism, in secret, without a jury, on evidence protected from disclosure for "national security reasons". These tribunals, composed exclusively of officers in the armed service, have the authority to impose a death sentence by only a two-thirds majority, with no process of appeal. The grandiosity of this defiance of due process would be breathtaking enough; the order expands its own scope by identifying "Individuals subject to this order" as anyone not a United States citizen who the president may determine that it is in the interests of the United States be subject to this order -- in other words, not because of anything the individual has done, but simply because the president says so.

Ah, but these are extraordinary times, are they not? Columnist Wendy Kaminer, writing in The American Prospect on November 5, after the passage of the Patriot act, but before the military order was issued, observed the flavor of our common life thus:

People are terrified: According to a recent survey, one-third of New Yorkers now favor the internment of people suspected of being "sympathetic to terrorists." Attorney General Ashcroft keeps fear alive by reminding us that terrorists are lurking and planning more attacks: "Terrorism is a clear and present danger to America today," he told the Senate, carefully using the legal catch-phrase that justifies the suspension of constitutional safeguards on government power. He may be right about the continuing threats of attack. But it's worth stressing that the administration is not seeking to expand the power of the government's executive branch solely for the sake of combating terrorism: The counter-terrorism bill includes general expansions of federal prosecutorial power. And if enacted, many onerous new restrictions on liberty will not expire when the emergency that prompted them has passed. The administration has resisted applying a sunset provision to its entire bill. The prospect of additional attacks probably frightens more people than the nature of our response to them does. Still, we shouldn't underestimate the dangers of sacrificing freedom to fear. During the 2000 presidential election campaign, George W. Bush said that he opposed using secret evidence in federal prosecutions of noncitizens; now, he advocates imprisoning immigrants on the basis of no evidence at all. But Americans should not assume that only immigrants and people who appear to be Middle Eastern are at risk. We will all be under surveillance. We are all suspects now. Patriotism does not oblige us to acquiesce in the destruction of liberty. Patriotism obliges us to question it, at least.

And in a follow-up essay on December 3 she continued:

I'm not denigrating patriotism; I just wish that we'd reconsider its requirements. Dissent, not self-censorship, is patriotic. If, for example, you believe that the war against Afghanistan is immoral or dangerously counterproductive, you are obliged to say so. If I were to draw up a list of great citizens and patriots, it would include a number of dissenters -- like Martin Luther King, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Eugene V. Debs, who was imprisoned in the early years of the century for criticizing U.S. entry into World War I. Whether he was right or wrong about the war, Debs was much more of a patriot than the bureaucrats who imprisoned him for airing his opinions. While today's beleaguered antiwar protestors may be mistaken in their analysis of terrorism, they're better Americans than are people who hoard antibiotics that may be needed by their fellow citizens. If patriotism requires a sense of community and a willingness to make sacrifices for the public good, it is undermined by the survivalism that takes hold when people feel besieged. So it's fair to say that we have a patriotic duty to one another to stave off panic and the survivalist behaviors it encourages. (Stoicism has rarely seemed more virtuous.) Some people say that we can't live with fear -- but few people have ever lived without it. You don't have to imagine a holocaust; just think of life in a high-crime housing project. There's probably no period in history that hasn't been shaped by fear of war, disease, or some other arbitrary disaster. From that perspective, there's nothing particularly new about what Americans are enduring today except for the fact that it's Americans enduring it. And at least we don't have to believe that the threat of anthrax or smallpox epidemic issues from nature or from a wrathful God; we know that it's posed by other human beings, and we can at least imagine stopping them. So it was discouraging to hear the president describe Osama bin Laden as "the evil one," as if he were Satan himself or a demon on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We need to acknowledge that bin Laden is a murderous human being, however much we want to exclude him from the species. There's nothing supernatural about terrorism; human barbarism requires no help from the devil. People who believe that confronting terrorism requires God's help will disagree, but I suspect that what we mostly need now is self-control.

She is quite right, it seems to me; nowhere is it given to the human race, even to the privileged American segment of it, that we are supposed to be able to live without fear. Indeed, it is only when we are willing to live with fear, to live in the face of it and in despite of it, that the rights we flaunt to the rest of the world, and supposedly cherish, really mean anything. If we remember nothing else about Martin Luther King, as year by year his heroic prophecy slips from living memory into myth, we ought to remember this: his showing us that to be a whole human being and a citizen is a dignity that one claims through steadfast personal courage. It is not bestowed by the power of others, nor can it be taken away except you surrender it through your own cowardice of heart.

These are extraordinary times, yes, but we have been here before. We have been here before, and my own generation made a sad mistake, I believe, when we surrendered the word 'patriotism' to the forces of reaction, militarism, and the status quo. We are patriots who believe the promises of liberty upon which this nation was founded; we are patriots who would hold our leaders accountable to the ideals they profess to serve rather than to our own comfort and safety. The night before he died, in his speech to the sanitation workers of Memphis, Dr. King said this:

If I lived in China or even in Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for the rightŠ Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America a better nation. I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountain top. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now, I just want to do God's will. And I'm happy tonight, I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Do you see how they go together, the statements "Somewhere I read about freedom of speech. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest." and "I'm happy tonight, I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man"? To be truly free, we must be brave; to be truly brave, we must be free.

Russ Feingold, Democratic senator from Wisconsin, was the only dissenting voice in the Senate before the passage of Patriot. He pointed out to his colleagues that the framers of the U.S. Constitution, even though they'd just been through a war with Britain, "wrote a Constitution of limited powers, and an explicit Bill of Rights to protect liberty in times of war, as well as in times of peace." Feingold added: Of course there is no doubt that, if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your e-mail communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America. Preserving our freedom is one of the main reasons that we are now engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that war without firing a shot if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people.

It is sad to me that the American people seem largely willing for our liberties to be sacrificed in the name of assuaging our fear. A contributing editor to MotherJones.com, Brook Shelby Biggs, sees the same dynamic at work; on October 4 he wrote, Far more surprising than government attempts to stifle criticism is the seeming willingness of the media, politicians, and activist groups -- particularly those on the left -- to censor themselves. Some may be backing off to avoid the kind of public crucifixion endured by Politically Incorrect's Bill Maher. Others, however, apparently truly believe that frank and vibrant discourse is damaging to the country's moral fiber.

Frank and vibrant discourse is the very foundation of this country's moral fiber; it is never more necessary than in extraordinary times, in times of confusion and disagreement and danger. We do injuriously -- we do harm, to ourselves, to each other, to the legacy of our past and the future of our children -- when we get so scared that we think it is better to clamp down, to get things under control, to sacrifice liberty for safety. The founding fathers knew better; they knew that safety lay in freedom, and freedom lay in courage. Martin Luther King knew better; he knew that human dignity could only belong to those who would stand up to corrupt power. Eugene V. Debs knew better; he knew it in his prison cell, which could not change his mind about the madness of the first world war -- a prison cell which never has changed the mind of anyone of principle, nor ever shall. The Asian-Americans knew better; they knew it in the bitter injustice of internment camps fifty years ago, when their fellow citizens exchanged the demands of liberty and justice for hysterical comfort and the illusion of safety. Are these extraordinary times? We have been here before; did we learn nothing?

This congregation is one of the most subversively patriotic American institutions I know. Right here in this Society, we gather together -- we assemble freely, we exercise our liberty -- in our acknowledged differences, and we reason together of the questions that confront us, in extraordinary times or whatever other times there may be. We read what people have written; the human record of discovery in trial and error. We speak as we think, in the confidence that even though all should disagree, none will prevent us from being heard. We challenge every power that would fetter the human mind, the human spirit, or human dignity. We cherish the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do not misdoubt her strength.

Here in this community of memory and promise, we lay claim to a faith that does not offer us salvation, in this world or the next. Yet we know that it is only by faith that freedom can be maintained in the face of fear; it is only by our faith in the equal dignity of the human spirit in diversity, and our essential, inescapable kinship with one another, that we can confidently choose the risks of liberty over the seductive protection of authority and control. It is only by faith that real patriotism speaks out against national hysteria, contending for the principles of freedom by which our true safety has always been assured. Courage and freedom, patriotism and faith -- these are the very stuff of extraordinary times; the times that call them forth, the times in which they shine. May these be indeed such days, and may these days call forth in us renewed devotion to the law, the liberty, and the light of our faith in freedom, that we may be worthy stewards of the promise that has been America, and loyal heralds of a future world of liberty and justice for all.