The Imperfect Reconciliation of Liberty and Security
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Description
In the current state of American life, it is easy to identify the full range of economic issues brought on by the folly of a nation that thinks that it can tax, regulate, and subsidize its way to economic prosperity. For these issues, we have only ourselves to blame. In dealing with these problems, moreover, the correct solutions all move in one direction. Any set of viable reforms from the present status quo calls for less government— not more— which means that the basic problems of the nation are political, not substantive. The question of national security, and the impact that national security has on individual civil liberties, is not cut from this cloth. As a general matter, many of the American left, which has long favored, or at least tolerated, extensive government regulation of economic markets, has taken quite the opposite view when it comes to civil liberties, where it often opposes government regulation on matters that could be justified even within the framework of a nation dedicated to the principles of individual liberty and limited government. One example is their opposition to punishing any news outlet that republishes, for a general readership, confidential information that it knows was stolen by other individuals. At the same time, many on the American right, who tend to be suspicious of government regulation on economic matters, take quite the opposite line on issues of national security: they favor fairly extensive levels of direct regulation, some of which, as I shall argue, are not consistent with these same principles of personal liberty and limited government. On this, the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the key point about national security is all too obvious: these wounds are not, in any sense of the word, self-inflicted. They are often forced upon us by the worst actions of enemies sworn to our destruction. These groups would not be placated in the slightest by our return to small government policies on economic and social matters. Quite the opposite: on social issues, the authoritarian intolerance of al-Qaeda and its allies leads to their hatred of Western democracies. That hatred, in turn, fuels their willingness to engage in violence and terror against the United States and other nations that foster and protect an open society. There is little doubt that much of this antagonism toward the United States was cultivated by Osama bin Laden, who remained a symbol of the steadfast opposition to the United States for the nearly ten years in which he was in hiding. There is good reason to celebrate his demise at the hands of United States special forces, but no reason to think that his death means the end of the movement that he led for so long. On his death, a new generation of leaders will arise to continue the attack on American values and American institutions. It is unlikely that any of them can, at least in the short run, capture the bin Laden mystique. Yet by the same token they may bring a measure of youth and aggressiveness to their task that poses new threats to the United States and the West. No matter who is in charge, one truth remains: there is little that can be done to placate these diehard enemies. There is much that must be done to resist them.
Source Publication
Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security
Source Editors/Authors
Dean Reuter, John Yoo
Publication Date
2011
Recommended Citation
Epstein, Richard A., "The Imperfect Reconciliation of Liberty and Security" (2011). Faculty Chapters. 382.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/382
