Feedback From Communitarian Update
Number 50
We asked:
We hear daily about new measures that are meant to enhance national security, but are
criticized as endangering our rights. If you take it for granted that the events of 9/11 do call
for some new homeland protection measures, but believe other measures are clearly
excessive-what criteria should we apply to sort out what is needed and what is "too
much"? Can one still use the criteria of a "reasonable person" in our complex society?
Here are the responses we received.
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In the freedom - security equation a tilt in the direction of greater
security has become obvious.
What is not so obvious are the security measures that should be applied. It seems to me that
actions which thwart terrorist acts should be given latitudinarian authority with appropriate
sunset provisions.
Herb London
Hudson Institute
To be provocative, I'll offer the following: In determining which (if
any) new security measures are necessary after 9/11, we can apply the
reasonable person standard. But the question should be judged from the
perspective of the reasonable person in the position of the innocent
party who will be targeted, profiled, detained, subjected to risk of
erroneous imprisonment, or otherwise selected to bear the burden of any
such security measure. It's very easy for white folks (of which I am
one) to declare that people of color should do their "patriotic duty"
and submit to all manner of poking, prodding, profiling, tracking, and
screening without complaint, even when the efficacy of the measures is
dubious at best and when the motive seems primarily to advance the
business interests of, say, the airline industry by offering token
reassurance and a false sense of security to the (predominantly white)
traveling public. Or are we to deny that the reasonable person of color
would willingly subject herself to good faith measures that were
actually efficacious?
Stephen Clark
Assistant Professor of Law
Albany Law School
Albany, New York
Your policy of not running anonymous responses is, at least in part, a key to being a "reasonable
person" in our complex society. We need to begin appreciating the difference between the
concept of anonymity and confidentiality. I am an educator. I think that anonymity, generally
speaking, is educationally bankrupt and morally corrupting. Communitarianism is committed to
accountability to the community. Anonymity breeds huge splits between private and public
behavior which in term has a long-term impact on accountability and social responsibility. Most
people are concerned about the kind of intrusiveness implied by the new security measures
because they do not trust that the information will be used only for the purposes of thwarting
terrorist acts. They fear that once this information is in a file somewhere someone will eventually
get access to it and use it in an inappropriate way. My approach would be to beef up our rules
about confidentiality and make any use of information gathered in the name of homeland security
strictly limited to that purpose and that purpose alone with very severe penalties for any other
use. As Popeye says, "I yam what I yam" and we'd do well, in the long run, to live in the truth and
work our way forward together from there.
Marc Marenco
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Director, Pacific Institute for Ethics and Social Policy
Pacific University
As a professor of law and public policy, the framework I most commonly use as a starting point
for discussion of these issues is the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, which in today's
organizational jargon might be thought of as the mission statement for the second government of
the United States. It basically sets forth six different goals or purposes, without assigning any
hierarchical value to any of them relative to the others:
1. Form a more perfect union.
2. Establish justice.
3. Provide for the common defense.
4. Ensure domestic tranquility
5. Promote the general welfare.
6. Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
In order for this governmental framwork to accomplish the objectives intended by its framers and
ratifiers, all of these goals must be met at some threshold level, although the thresholds for all of
them vary with circumstances. Historically, our constitutional form of government has been in
the gravest jeopardy at times when leaders from the political branches have been successful in
convincing the populace that some of these goals needed to be either severely diminished or
utterly sacrificed in the service of others. Finding and assuring the appropriate balance point at
any given point in time is the very goal of public policy in a democratic society, especially in
times of duress.
Lloyd Burton, Ph.D.
Director, Program in Environmental Policy, Management, and Law
Graduate School of Public Affairs
University of Colorado at Denver
The point is the events of 9/11 do not call for new homeland security - they call for a resolution
of the question of a free state of Palestine. In an essay published (January 2002?) in Radical
Philosophy, Susan Buck-Morss argues convincingly that the security state which is now to the
fore in the US (with the UK tagging along in its selotape and sticky plaster way) is not simply
outside democracy, but in fact a continuation, if more overtly, of a mechanism which operated
throughout the cold war and which was implicated in another 9/11, the US-backed coup which
ousted the legitimate government of Chile on September 11th 1974. To go any distance to accept
new security structures (which are not the same as common-sense measures) facilitates the
primacy of the security state overt the democratic state it purports to "protect." Not that shopping
as usual is the only alternative!
Dr. M. F. R. Miles
University of Plymouth
Such thinking as I have done about this issue has focused on foreign nationals. I fail to
understand why foreign nationals arrested in connection with terrorist activities, and why
American groups speaking on their behalf, believe they should have Constitutional rights. The
Constitution applies to American citizens, does it not? By what logic can Constitutional
protections be extended to non-citizens? Such extensions seem to water down the meaning and
importance of the Constitution itself. American citizens struggled and died to establish and
defend the Constitution. If the Constitution's blessings are to be strewn randomly to the world at
large, what incentive do other nations' citizens have to establish their own constitutional systems
of rights, responsibilities, order and justice? All they have to do is claim protection under the
American Constitution. "That which is achieved too easily, is esteemed too lightly." By watering
down the meaning of the Constitution, we are in danger of demeaning it. Foreign nationals
should certainly be treated humanely, but they have no Constitutional rights.
Jim Flechtner
Supervisor of a Social Services Department
Findlay, Ohio
The recent laws involving the government's attempt to have "total information" on American
citizens to see if their credit card bills, web habits, prescriptions, etc. amount to a suspicious
pattern of behavior strike me as quite alarming. The problem of terrorism is great indeed, but it
seems to me that a far better solution would be to keep the FBI and CIA from letting turf battles
over jurisdiction prevent them from serving the best interests of our people. To consider every
American a potential suspect and to keep files on everyone to see if any potentially threatening
behavior is afoot is to say that the terrorists have one, that we are afraid of them. Our job should
be to take it to them. Let them quiver in fear in caves wondering if the next bombing will end
their miserable lives. We should not have to live our own lives in fear. If a people rises up and
claims that as long as they are around we shall not sleep safely, wipe them out, so that we may. I
believe one can use a reasonable person
Nathan Albright
Civil Engineering student at the University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA
First, I argue that there is no single rule or criteria to strike a satisfying balance between freedom
and security in all cases. The real issue is whether our present values and institutions, and the
ways we create new values and institutions, is up to the task of striking this balance in the face of
the terrorist threat. I am fully confident that they are.
Second, I say we can and must use the notion of a reasonable person in the terrorist age. The
threat of terrorism changes only a subset of the conditions we live in, not the fiber and potential
of the typical reasonable person. This is actually a critical question because terrorism is in part
the rejection of reason as a means for defining and attaining a good society. If we reject reason in
the fight against terrorism then terrorism has "won" on this important level.
To save the effort of a second email, can I add two more unrelated comments?
First, I noted in Time magazine the passing of John Rawls. Persons concerned with questions of
social justice and ways to think about them owe him a huge debt of gratitude.
Secondly, given all the focus and energy on the threat of terrorism, I am baffled by the silence
about the actuality of social failure that already exists in our country. Specifically, I'd like to see
some communitarian research that statistically compares the "ten worst places to live" in the
United States to the rest of the country. And why the silence in the political community around
this horrific reality? (The measures of comparison are themselves an interesting question because
they reflect on the definition of the good society. Perhaps they would include statistics on life
expectancy, income and wealth, education, crime, drug use and mental health, political and
community participation, and so on.)
Adam White
Saint Paul, MN
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