I was quite nonplussed today when I opened my CNN.com and saw Paula Zahn’s happy-joy-joy face above the caption reading: "Are our laws strong enough to keep us safe? We look at whether personal safety means sacrificing our civil rights."
Hello! Are pigs flying? Has the cow jumped over the moon? Did Castro land on the shores of Florida and take over the country?
If there are a couple of things I’ve learned about the media the past five years is that they have been a tool for this administration and the ruling party to test controversial subjects and direction through talk shows. (And it seems I recall hearing on NPR that before topics get suggested in our newspapers and on our talk shows, that the think tanks have already parsed out the talking points of the subject.)
So even though Paula Zahn introduces it as just one of those innocent coffee break or water-cooler topics, it more than likely has eight hairy legs to stand on, a red hour glass on its belly, and the incisors needed to transmit some nasty venom.
What exactly is Paula Zahn asking? Well, that’s a great question and the crux of it pertains to civil rights. You know, those rights that define America as "the land of the free...." If I focus on the last sentence alone, notice that it doesn’t say specific rights, nor does it say "a few" or "some of" our rights. This leaves one to think that "sacrificing our civil rights" means the whole lot, the entire 52 deck of cards. Call that bad writing, or editing.
Wikipedia, the third most wonderful tool on the web, behind Google and Dictionary.com, describes civil rights as the following:
...the right to get redress if injured by another, the right to privacy, the right of peaceful protest, the right to a fair investigation and trial if suspected of a crime, and more generally-based constitutional rights such as the right to vote, the right to personal freedom, the right to freedom of movement and anti-discrimination laws. As civilisations emerged and formalised through written constitutions, some of the more important civil rights were granted to citizens. When those grants were later found inadequate, civil rights movements emerged as the vehicle for claiming more equal protection for all citizens and advocating new laws to restrict the effect of current discriminations.
Now. Walk yourself back through those pillars of civil rights and list the ones you want to live without. Do any of them really provide "safety," as Paula Zahn’s show was going to prove or disprove? Or, rather, do you believe that these rights are the fabric of America? Hell, aren’t they really the evidence of a civilized nation?
There have been theories in governments throughout history that believe two things: 1) that individual freedoms are a plague. 2) that the citizens don't really want them and shouldn't be trusted with them.
Let me introduce Eric Hoffer, who analyzes both ideas in his book ,The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. I'd like to suggest a quote regarding this second point: Hoffer writes that to the "barren," "insecure," and "frustrated, freedom from responsibility is... attractive....They are eager to barter their independence for relief from the burdens...[S]ubmission by all to a supreme leader is an approach to their ideal of equality."
And this is the point I see when I look at Paula Zahn’s ad today--it's an implication that we feel so INSECURE as co-owners in this great American project that we should entertain the thought of giving up our responsibility and share of its welfare. It's absurd to even bring this up, unless her point was to completely refute the idea of sacraficing our civil rights. Yet, I highly doubt that because I know these times and I know the media and besides, her ad didn't paint that picture.
So, to answer Zahn’s question, let me pose this one: "Would America be America without its equality of rights?"
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P.S. One last thing: I found a great quote in the beginning of Hoffer's book that could be in reference to this admininstration and their bungling of everything--from the economy to the energy crisis to the national deficit to the war on terror. From Genesis: "And slime they had for mortar."
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