Where It Is

Fear has assumed an inordinate priority at this moment in history. Called now more often, in American discourse, by the name we give it at its worst extremity, terror shapes our world. We, who when we pledge our allegiance to our homeland, declare that ours is a nation “with liberty and justice for all,” defer to terror to define exactly what we mean by the words liberty, justice and all.

Which of our cherished liberties must we forgo in the hope that our Sovereign Ruler might thereby keep us safe from that which he taught us to dread? Surely, as one example, we must dispense with our right to be secure from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Without complaint we must submit willingly to being detained, fondled, stripped, probed and scanned before boarding a plane on the vague assertion that someone, somewhere intends us harm and that this procedure preserves us from it. Never mind that freedom from such a process was granted us by our Bill of Rights in reaction to the writs of assistance and thus is among the core motivations for the American Revolution. Never mind also that this particular liberty has since evolved into a fundamental expectation of ethical government far beyond its authors’ time or our own shores.

Shall we not also accept that justice can not be swift, certain, moral or impartial in times of peril? A speedy trial of a case on its merits is perhaps a quaint expectation when we are not sure if a a prisoner might be hiding a plan to do us all great harm. Our “precision guidance systems” may in fact miss their target and kill or injure innocent civilians. Lets be reasonable about this– they were accurate to within an engineering approximation and besides we had to target the “bad guys.” Torture is immoral in ordinary times but now? Impartial– those people would not even be prisoners of a liberty loving country like ours unless they did something wrong!

We can not be expected to temper our actions to grant liberty and justice to the prisoners in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. Nor can we grant these to Iraqi or Lebanese civilians who are close to the the bad people that the good people are shooting at. We can only grant them to Americans. Well, not Americans who have friends or business associates who may perhaps support those who intend to do us all harm. Oh, and not the Mexicans. Just Americans, but all of them. Well, post Katrina, not the black folks. Well, not the poor….

Where It Belongs

Those who have made a special practice of cultivating enlightenment tell us that fear clouds perception, hinders judgment, and thus blocks enlightenment. Suzanne Segal dealt with this at some considerable length in her book Collision with the Infinite. One often sees this honest, substantial view of the presence of fear in her spiritual practice reduced to this aphoristic quote: “the presence of fear means only that fear is present, and nothing more.”

As a reification of her observations this phrase has little value. But perhaps there is a better reason one sees it sometimes used to stand in for her thought. These few of her words, in themselves, are a worthwhile guidepost for relocating fear to its proper place. The fact that we experience terror tells us nothing about the character of terrorists. Nor does it even tell us anything of substance about ourselves. It should no more shape our fundamental values than should a yawn or a blink.

It is, after all, only what it is. If clinging to it, or it to us, might it not help to voice what has been heard before?

I am not possessed of this fear
This fear does not possess me
I am not this fear
This fear is not me

Author Matthew Rothschild has been with The Progressive since 1983. He keeps a running tally of civil liberties infringements in his McCarthyism Watch.

McCarthyism Watch

In the January 2002 issue he wrote about The New McCarthyism saying there, in part: “We’ve been here before. From the Alien and Sedition Acts to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and his imprisonment of anti-war editors, from the suppression of speech during World War I and the Palmer Raids to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the repression of the McCarthy days, the government has seized upon times of peril to scapegoat immigrants and to suppress liberties.” See that article for background of his series.

The New McCarthyism

OR

THE INSPECTION-HOUSE:

CONTAINING
THE

IDEA OF A NEW PRINCIPLE
OF CONSTRUCTION

APPLICABLE
TO

ANY SORT
OF ESTABLISHMENT, IN WHICH PERSONS OF

ANY DESCRIPTION
ARE TO BE KEPT UNDER INSPECTION;

AND
IN PARTICULAR TO

PENITENTIARY-HOUSES,

PRISONS,
HOUSES OF INDUSTRY, WORK-HOUSES, POOR-HOUSES, LAZARETTOS, MANUFACTORIES, HOSPITALS,
MAD-HOUSES, AND SCHOOLS:

WITH

A PLAN OF MANAGEMENT

ADAPTED
TO THE PRINCIPLE:

IN A SERIES OF LETTERS,

WRITTEN
IN THE YEAR 1787, FROM CRECHEFF IN WHITE

RUSSIA.
TO A FRIEND IN ENGLAND

BY JEREMY BENTHAM,

OF LINCOLN’S
INN, ESQUIRE.

Have you ever wondered if there might be some hidden purpose in Homeland Security measures that have all the homies under seemingly constant surveilance yet seem never to search out the hidden dangers they claim to protect us from? This 1787 classic text may have more to say about contemporary life than the age of it would suggest.

Source: Bentham,
Jeremy The Panopticon
Writings. Ed. Miran Bozovic (London: Verso, 1995). p. 29-95

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see also the brief biographical article (only in German):
Ulrich Duchrow - Wikipedia