TechSynd
14-10-2006, 05:40
Civil liberties in modern times is something most of us take for granted. We happily quote our various constitutions for addressing civil liberties as being factual and institutional without realizing the cost of institutionalizing the rights we hold dear. We forget how heavily our ancestors paid to achieve the freedoms we have today, while at the same time, dually believing that our rights will remain inviolable for the most part. We believe that although temporary arrangements may lead to despotisms or to a state of security in which certain liberties are curtailed, that despite all of this, our rights, for the most part, will remain intact.
Human history is a history of some six to seven thousand years of bloody and brutal history. We’ve gone from empires to democracies, oligarchies to republics, and monarchies to constitutional monarchies. Human history of one of progress towards libertarianism if we consider both economics and political application of the rights granted to man. While economic capitalism may be the wrong choice and the wrong direction for man, no one can deny it exists and rules the economic life of virtually every single nation on earth. Even those who deny being capitalistic are indeed capitalistic on a statist level.
Throughout this history, the rights endowed to men have grown over the millennia. Once, only basic rights of property and of finances were allowed, but eventually, pressure put on the despots and monarchs ruling at the time by other nobles or by the people caused the rights to grow into political freedoms and religious freedoms. This was not an easy task.
In the civilization known as Athens, political freedoms were first granted to humankind. Granted, slavery still existed then, and granted women were treated like slaves, but the first selective democracy was established, giving power into the hands of some fifty-thousand people, more than just one or fifty depending on dictator or oligarchy.
The freedom to speak has been the hardest to establish because it poses a threat to those in power. Through freedom of speech, the lowest of the low can make complaints freely in most cases against the ruling individuals, criticizing their ways and methods. The first time the freedom to speak was enshrined within a constitution or formal law as being free and mostly non-selective (you can be arrested for using the freedom of speech to say you will kill other people, or cause serious disorder through other ways of speaking) was in the American colonies. Once they achieved their independence, the option to allow freedom of speech became harder to ignore among the people of every oppressed regime in the world. Eventually, the French created their Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, and the fight for the freedom to speak your mind was victorious.
The freedom to freely worship any religion was one of the hardest rights to establish since it usurped the power of a state religion and proved dangerous as it allowed people to seek their own path in life rather than accept a given order to “thou shall”. Some of the earliest civilizations allowing freedom of religion were ancient Persia and, surprisingly, the Islamic sultanates. Of course, during a time of war these rights always tend to lessen in order to give greater power to those in charge to “protect” us. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, to distract those on bottom from the people on top.
The path towards human progress has been a bloody one. The rights we live with have been established on the lives of men and women fighting to give their children a better future. The greatest insult we could ever make to those people is to support the destruction of due process and civil liberties, one by one. While, during a time of war, it may seem easy to give up civil liberty for civil security, the re-establishment of civil liberties given up is no easy task.
The greatest threat to civil liberty is civil security. Demanding we give up civil liberties to gain civil security, it promises to do away with our rights and replace it with state-controlled “rights”. The right to duty. The right to be watched. The right to be guilty before proven innocent. The right to be declared an enemy combatant. The right to not be reviewed independently. These rights are what will replace our civil liberties if the current trend continues in our war society.
A notable Republican Senator recently said, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” I say, if we have total surveillance, we have nothing to hide from the government, and that in itself is a thought so disturbing that it’s hard to believe there’s people promoting total surveillance in this nation.
The real question is, do we want to live in a society where we are completely safe, where all our enemies are caught and captured, and where stray thoughts no longer exist, but where unorthodox people are caught and captured; or do we want to live in a society where we remain free people, where crime still exists, but is rather a good price to pay for freedom?
Human history is a history of some six to seven thousand years of bloody and brutal history. We’ve gone from empires to democracies, oligarchies to republics, and monarchies to constitutional monarchies. Human history of one of progress towards libertarianism if we consider both economics and political application of the rights granted to man. While economic capitalism may be the wrong choice and the wrong direction for man, no one can deny it exists and rules the economic life of virtually every single nation on earth. Even those who deny being capitalistic are indeed capitalistic on a statist level.
Throughout this history, the rights endowed to men have grown over the millennia. Once, only basic rights of property and of finances were allowed, but eventually, pressure put on the despots and monarchs ruling at the time by other nobles or by the people caused the rights to grow into political freedoms and religious freedoms. This was not an easy task.
In the civilization known as Athens, political freedoms were first granted to humankind. Granted, slavery still existed then, and granted women were treated like slaves, but the first selective democracy was established, giving power into the hands of some fifty-thousand people, more than just one or fifty depending on dictator or oligarchy.
The freedom to speak has been the hardest to establish because it poses a threat to those in power. Through freedom of speech, the lowest of the low can make complaints freely in most cases against the ruling individuals, criticizing their ways and methods. The first time the freedom to speak was enshrined within a constitution or formal law as being free and mostly non-selective (you can be arrested for using the freedom of speech to say you will kill other people, or cause serious disorder through other ways of speaking) was in the American colonies. Once they achieved their independence, the option to allow freedom of speech became harder to ignore among the people of every oppressed regime in the world. Eventually, the French created their Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, and the fight for the freedom to speak your mind was victorious.
The freedom to freely worship any religion was one of the hardest rights to establish since it usurped the power of a state religion and proved dangerous as it allowed people to seek their own path in life rather than accept a given order to “thou shall”. Some of the earliest civilizations allowing freedom of religion were ancient Persia and, surprisingly, the Islamic sultanates. Of course, during a time of war these rights always tend to lessen in order to give greater power to those in charge to “protect” us. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, to distract those on bottom from the people on top.
The path towards human progress has been a bloody one. The rights we live with have been established on the lives of men and women fighting to give their children a better future. The greatest insult we could ever make to those people is to support the destruction of due process and civil liberties, one by one. While, during a time of war, it may seem easy to give up civil liberty for civil security, the re-establishment of civil liberties given up is no easy task.
The greatest threat to civil liberty is civil security. Demanding we give up civil liberties to gain civil security, it promises to do away with our rights and replace it with state-controlled “rights”. The right to duty. The right to be watched. The right to be guilty before proven innocent. The right to be declared an enemy combatant. The right to not be reviewed independently. These rights are what will replace our civil liberties if the current trend continues in our war society.
A notable Republican Senator recently said, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” I say, if we have total surveillance, we have nothing to hide from the government, and that in itself is a thought so disturbing that it’s hard to believe there’s people promoting total surveillance in this nation.
The real question is, do we want to live in a society where we are completely safe, where all our enemies are caught and captured, and where stray thoughts no longer exist, but where unorthodox people are caught and captured; or do we want to live in a society where we remain free people, where crime still exists, but is rather a good price to pay for freedom?