Are Our Freedoms At Risk?

Building on the last post, let me make another comment, prefacing it with a story.  I was on a panel at a political science meeting this past Spring. It was not political in the partisan sense.  I was presenting on Lincoln's "Lectures on Discoveries and Inventions."  Not exactly hot stuff.  But one of the panelists, in the process of delivering his paper, made some comments about how freedom of speech is at risk in the United States and the ability to dissent was being threatened.  The blame was placed at the feet of the evil Bush Administration.  My response was this: the proof that this scholar was wrong in his assessment of the status of freedom in the United States is that he could sit there and publicly upbraid the Bush Administration with absolutely no fear that anything would happen to him.  The same goes for fools like Keith Olbermann.  If there really was incipient fascism in the nation, Keith Olbermann would be off the air.  But his show will be on tonight and no one in the government has given one thought to shutting him up.  If Donald Rumsfeld says, "I think opponents of the war in Iraq are wrong," that is not fascism, that is a politician trying to influence public opinion.  People argue against any administration, and then the administration argues back.  That's democracy, not fascism.  On matters of national security, if a Secretary of Defense says, "I think your policy views are wrong because they make us weaker," it doesn't mean he thinks you are not a patriot, it just means he thinks you are wrong.  After all, not everybody is right.  And don't the administration's critics believe that the administration's policies are wrong, and thus have made us actually less secure.  This does not mean that the administration thus becomes the enemy of American freedom.  It just makes them wrong.  Is it not enough to argue against our opponents' policies, give reasons why they are wrong, and then offer a better solution?  Must we attack their motivations at every turn?  Some on the right do this.  Shame on them.  Keith Olbermann and some on the left do the same.  Shame on them.

Yes, there is a kind of comfort that comes from believing ourselves morally superior to those who disagree with us.  He who is without sin cast the first stone (Ouch!!  Who just hit me?).  And no one likes being told that they are in serious error.  So we comfort ourselves that those who accuse us of error must be doing so out of bad motives.  But self-righteousness and smug superiority are a failing whether coming from the left or right.