Rev. Kendyl Gibbons
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
February 9, 2003

Eternal Vigilance

The question is, what does it mean to be safe? We all want to feel safe; we want to be able to relax, to not have to be in a state of high alert all the time. We want our children to be safe; we want things that are important and meaningful to us, the things we treasure, to be safe. We don't want to have to worry about what's going to happen next; we don't like being threatened. One of the reasons that human communities evolve structures of tradition and authority is in order to feel safe; to feel that we know what is supposed to happen next, and what to do about it if it doesn't. Human societies create governments not just because some people like to boss other people around, but because we want some mechanism for enforcing certain kinds of safety. We hope for fair rules that everyone obeys so that we can all relax and enjoy our lives, without anyone taking unfair advantage of anyone else. But in the end, what does it really mean to be safe?

This is a question that has taken on new urgency since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Surely being safe means not having sky scrapers collapsing and planes flying into the nation's symbolic military headquarters. If we are under attack, it follows that we are not safe. But the safety of our culture was uncertain even before 9/11. Drugs and guns infest even the best of our schools - how safe can our children be? Crimes of person and property happen to people we know, nice people, who don't deserve pain and loss - how safe are we, really? Gullible seniors are scammed by con artists, sexual predators lurk through the shadows of the Internet, a pair of fantasy-addled snipers spread paranoia throughout the nation's capital - how safe can we be? It is inevitable to think that something ought to be done about these threats. We ought to be able to get on a plane in the confidence of reaching our destination; we ought to be able to walk the streets, go to work and school, in peace.

At the same time, there are other kinds of safety that we want. We want to be able to say what we think, and to think differently from others. We want to be able to have conversations about important matters, and share ideas, even when some of those ideas challenge the way that the world has always been. We want to be able to buy and read controversial books, and be safe from anyone else telling us what to think, or say, or read. We want to get together with like-minded friends; we want to be able to tell the government when it is doing something dumb or wrong, without getting in trouble for it. We want to say what we think in letters and phone calls and e-mail messages without strangers reading or overhearing us. We want to be able to put our belongings away without strangers sneaking into our homes and rummaging through them.

Another kind of safety that we all want is the assurance that if we were ever to be accused of a crime, we could expect to have a prompt, fair, and public trial. We want to be able to defend ourselves intelligently, and to call on the skills of people who know the law and will be on our side. We want to know what we are accused of, and by whom, and for what reason. We want our family, friends, and legal representatives to know where we are and for how long, and to be able to help us as best they can. We want there to be reasonable limits on what our accusers and judges can do to intimidate us, trick us, or make our lives unpleasant during the trial, and what they can do to us should we be found guilty. We want it to be possible for flagrant miscarriages of justice to be made public, so that people of good will can work to correct them. These are all expectations that we have of what should be the case in a rational and civilized society, but they are all rights that have been won at great cost and slowly accumulated over the course of centuries of western cultural history.

It is entirely possible to create a social order that offers a great deal of safety from lawlessness, but none of the other kinds of safety, which are safety from the law. We are living, I fear, in an era when many people are more concerned about the first kind of safety, and impatient with the second kind, thinking that the basic liberties of a reasonable society are secure for them, and need no attentive protection. Nothing, in my estimation, could be further from the case.

Although recent events have brought these issues into sharp focus, the problem itself is an ancient one. Kings and emperors throughout history have wanted to make their people safe, but somehow that good intention has always ended up becoming about keeping their own thrones and powers safe from challenge. The question goes back to the political speculations of Plato's Republic and Aristotle's response; "Who shall guard the guardians?" It seems that it ought to be easy for rational people to agree upon the common denominators of simple justice and social order; a few moments of clear reflection, and any one of us can say what is fair in most situations. And yet, the dilemma of how to educate or discover leaders whose integrity and devotion to abstract justice and public good will not dissolve into self interest as soon as they are given authority over others remains a mystery. When such do people appear upon the stage of history, their light seems always tragically brief before power corrupts their successors, and the business of oppression proceeds as usual.

The founders of our nation understood the dimensions of this problem. The genius of their experiment in government was the hypothesis that citizens should be protect from the arbitrary authority of the state and its leaders at least as carefully as from their national enemies and the activities of the lawless among them. The founders wanted to secure the safety not only of our persons and our property, but of our liberties, and this kind of safety can only be achieved where the power of government is limited, and those who exercise it are held accountable. They understood that the people whose job it is to protect our safety in various ways will always claim that they could make us safer if they could only get us to do what they say. And the authors of the American experiment also understood that in the end we are not safe in either person or property if we are not safe in liberty, for we are not safe from the very forces that claim to be looking out for us.

The founders also understood that the will of the majority is a malleable thing; people are persuaded more forcefully by their fears and passions than they are by rational argument or far-sighted consequences. The majority, when threatened or outraged, will throw away wisdom, decency, and even self interest, in order to be avenged on the object of their wrath. They will not protect even their own rights while in the throes of mob hysteria; they certainly will not stop to cherish the rights of any despised minorities. The only way to be sure that our liberties will be safe from the encroachments of state authority, from the willfulness of popular opinion, or from our own demands to be protected from our fears, is to codify those rights in such a fundamental way that everything else flows from them; to make liberty the basis of law, rather than the other way around.

We have certainly had our ups and downs over the last 200 years, but all things considered, this approach has worked remarkably well. So well, in fact, that democratic government founded upon individual liberty is today the aspiration, if not the reality, of most of the nations of the globe. But here in the United States, exemplar and herald of the proposition that people are safest when they are most free, a change is brewing. We've been down this road before, though perhaps never so far so fast. It happens every time our safety from attack or crime seems under threat. It happened during World War II, when we set aside the promised rights of Japanese Americans, and collected them into camps, so that the country could feel safe from them, whether they as individuals had ever done it any harm or not. It happened during World War I, when Attorney General Mitchell Palmer authorized the violent raids against so-called radicals that infamously came to bear his name. It happened after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; it happened in the very infancy of the nation with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1789. We know from history that the way to induce Americans to forsake their fundamental liberties is to persuade them that their safety of person and property is threatened by an outside force.

There of course is no question that the events of September 11 were an attack upon our safety by outside forces, intended to make us feel unsafe. But friends, we have let the panic go to our heads, and the current national administration is losing no time to gather into its hands unprecedented constraints upon our personal liberties. Once established as appropriate powers of government, we shall be unlikely ever to win these freedoms back without painful and costly struggle.

Consider: in the USA Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act, and other recent presidential executive and military orders, the current federal government has reversed existing law and legal precedent to assert that:

Law enforcement may enter your home, conducting secret searches and taking photos without evidence of criminal activity, and without telling you until they choose to inform you. Law enforcement may wiretap your phone and Internet communications without a court order. Under mere "presumption of guilt," you, your car and your records may be searched.

Law enforcement may search medical, financial and educational records, as well as library records and bookstore purchases. Record keepers, such as librarians and bookstore employees, may not speak to anyone but their lawyer about the search under penalty of prosecution; this prohibition includes notifying the person whose records were searched, or speaking to reporters about it. Your Internet and credit card activity may be searched without notice and without a court order.

Anyone may be jailed for 30 days without charges, and without a phone call or access to an attorney. Individuals accused of terrorism may be prosecuted in secret military tribunals without juries. Conversations between federal prisoners and their attorneys may be wiretapped.

Justice Department regulations prohibiting illegal spying have been lifted. The CIA and FBI may join in conducting surveillance and covert activities against domestic groups, as was done in the 1960s to discredit leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Domestic terrorism, a new broadly defined crime, can apply to peaceful protesters. Women in Black, who silently vigil for Middle East peace, was named a potential terrorist group by the FBI.

And if this list is not sufficiently appalling - if we are not sufficiently appalled - we can be confident that the list will only grow longer. The question is, at this point, what can be done? The USA Patriot Act is law; congress passed it. Hastily, and with little consideration in a situation approaching panic, but nevertheless it was passed. It is not likely that the current president, attorney general, CIA or FBI will be swayed by the thoughtful protests of citizens whose rights stand inconveniently in the way of the government's ambition to hunt down and root out terrorists. Writing letters to our congress people is always a good thing, but in this instance it may be of less than usual effect. Very well, then; we cannot start at the top. This is exactly the issue - who will guard the guardians? When those whom we have elected to the responsibility of defending the safety of our liberty decide to use the authority assigned to them for the purpose of subverting our rights instead, what remedy do we have?

Until lately, I have felt only worry and despair whenever I have thought about these matters, which as those of you who were here last January may remember, troubled me even then. But lately, there has emerged a wonderfully creative and reassuring response to these outrages. To date, more than 32 cities and local municipal governments around the country have considered and passed resolutions denouncing the provisions of the acts and executive orders that threaten their citizens' civil liberties, and more importantly, announcing those communities' intended passive non-compliance with objectionable provisions of these acts. In some cases, the resolutions provide that local police forces are not to violate the rights of residents, even where the acts and orders give them the power to do so; also that they are to continue to follow local policies against racial profiling or detentions without charges, even where the acts and orders specifically urge such procedures, and that federal law enforcement personnel working in the jurisdiction are to observe these provisions as well. They sometimes urge libraries, book sellers, and internet access providers to make their clients aware of the possibility of secret monitoring, or in the case of municipal libraries, to purge borrowing records so that information is not available for collection. Some resolutions insist that federal law enforcement offices report to local authorities the names of anyone being held without charges within the municipality, or of any citizen of the jurisdiction being held anywhere else. Often the resolutions also urge the area's congressional representatives to work for the repeal of those parts of the acts that violate state and federal constitutional liberties.

Perhaps, when the greatest danger to our safety comes from the wish of the highest leaders to have their will without our interference, our best defense may lie in the power of local communities to come together and protect the liberties without which there is no meaningful safety. Such a resolution has been drafted for proposal to the Minneapolis City Council. After laying out the specific provisions of the Constitutional Bill of Rights, the USA Patriot and Homeland Security Acts, and several Justice Department directives and executive and military orders, this proposed resolution states:

Be it resolved by the City Council of Minneapolis,

That we affirm our strong support for the rights and liberties enumerated above which are guaranteed by our federal and state Constitutions, by international law, and by City ordinances, and opposes federal laws, directives and orders, including those cited above, that infringe on those rights and liberties, because such laws, directives and orders threaten the residents of our city; and further resolves as follows:

Section 1. That no city resources, including personnel and administrative or law enforcement funds, be used for unconstitutional activities.

Section 2. That the City of Minneapolis urges members of the Minnesota Congressional delegation to actively work for the revocation of any sections of the USA PATRIOT and Homeland Security Acts, and any federal legislation, orders or directives which limit or violate fundamental rights and liberties enumerated above or otherwise contained in the Constitutions of the State of Minnesota and of the United States or treaties of the United States.

Section 3. To recommend that the Director of the Minneapolis Library post a notice to all library users that their personal library records may be obtained by the federal government under the USA PATRIOT Act.

Section 4. That the Minneapolis Police Department not engage in profiling based on race, ethnicity, citizenship, religious or political affiliation.

Section 5. That all federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and personnel promptly report to the Minneapolis City Council and Human Rights Commission, to the extent legally possible, all instances in the City of Minneapolis, where activities, investigations, or proceedings have violated the fundamental rights and liberties enumerated above, including but not limited to each instance of:

Dearly beloved, I suggest to you today that there is no more urgent issue before us than the prospect of reclaiming our most basic liberties from the panicky acquiescence that has been given to this federal administration over the past year. It is perhaps ironic, or perhaps prophetic, that on the very day I bring you this message, we are celebrating the inauguration of our Society's new bookstore. Let me tell you one thing about that bookstore; the committee talked about this yesterday, and we agreed that it will be our policy to do everything in our power to keep no standing records of who buys what. John Ashcroft can't make us give him what we don't have. And if anybody ever does come calling on us, asking to know what those rabble rousers, Mibs Pearson and Shirley Losie, have been buying, I want everyone on the staff and among the bookstore volunteers to have one answer: "Only the minister can get that information." Because they may take our register tapes and our bookkeeping records and our inventory sheets, and I don't know what they could put together, but I want to know about it. For I promise you this: surely, as surely as I stand in this pulpit the next Sunday morning, I will speak the holy truth here; the truth of our freedom and its violation, and the names of everyone they asked about. And if they will have me in jail for that, then to jail I will go, with my head held high. (I shall cherish the hope that at the cake auction that year, someone will bake one with a file in it, and you all will bid on it, and send it to me!)

We are only as safe as we are free, my friends, and you know as well as I do what the price of freedom is. If that eternal vigilance is not here and now, we shall have no need of it hereafter. Thirty two communities have already taken a stand; say, shall ours be one more? Shall yours be one voice? Lift it now. Lift it now while you still can.

 

From Freedom Is As Freedom Does Corliss Lamont 1956

Why, you may ask, has freedom of speech always been more of an ideal than a reality? Perhaps because it is difficult for men to be sufficiently civilized to let their fellow citizens freely express ideas that seem dangerous and hateful. Those in authority frequently find it easier and safer to combat critics and dissenters with violence and suppression than to compete with them in the market place of opinion, answering their arguments and risking a democratic decision.

In a truly democratic society daring new ideas, forgotten old ideas, unsound ideas that have been repeatedly exposed, ideas that seem ludicrous, obscene, obsolete or subversive to the majority, must all be allowed expression. In the United States we must permit even ideas that are considered "un-American," whatever that may mean, to have their fling. The so-called crackpot often turns out to be a trail-blazer; the genius frequently starts his career as a minority of one. The independent, non-conforming mind has been one of the glories of human history.

Yet today, as in the past, dissent is liable to be dangerous. Truth-seekers down the centuries have frequently paid a heavy price for giving utterance to their beliefs. Philosophers, teachers, scientists, religious prophets, poets and political innovators have again and again been ridiculed, reviled, dismissed from their jobs, exiled, imprisoned or done to death for their dissenting doctrines. We cannot expect that in the rough and tumble of human discord there will ever be an end to the denunciation of those who seek to upset the status quo in ideology or institutions. We can reasonably hope, however, that the guarantees of civil liberties will become so widely accepted everywhere that dissenters need not fear the loss of their jobs, violence on the part of public authorities or private vigilantes, or government prosecution. But this is a hope for the future.

In the United States at present the civil liberties crisis has reached such proportions that no citizen who believes in democratic institutions and procedures can fail to be alarmed. The excuse for violations of civil liberty has traditionally been that some crisis so menaces the security of the city, state or nation that it is dangerous to permit the unchecked flow of ideas. Almost without exception this argument has been a mere pretext for the suppression of freedom by the powers that be. In times of emergency the basic freedoms are, if anything, even more essential than usual to the welfare of the community. For in such times a nation or locality need more than ever an alert, critical and constructive public opinion that will help guide it through whatever dangers are threatening.

One of America's most respected jurists, Judge Learned Hand, has brilliantly summed up the current dangers to freedom in the United States. "Our nation," he declared, "is embarked upon a venture yet unproved; we have set our hopes upon a community in which men shall be given unchecked control of their own lives. That community is in peril; it is invaded from within, it is threatened from without; it faces a test which it may fail to pass. The choice is ours whether, when we hear the pipes of Pan, we shall stampede like a frightened flock, forgetting all those professions on which we have claimed to rest our policy. God knows, there is risk in refusing to act till the facts are all in; but is there not greater risk in abandoning the conditions of all rational inquiry: Risk for risk, for myself I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry.

"I believe that that community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where non-conformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists to win or lose."