security is greater than liberty

“MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. How did this change come about? I do not know.” Jacque-Jean Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I Today, we discuss the most popular topic in political theory, the issue of the struggle between liberty and authority, with a new outlook upon the world. We think of ourselves as liberated, and free. But in reality, we are seeing the government develop in the guise of plutocracy. We are not free. The chains are still on us. The resolution upon the floor is “security is more important than liberty” This resolution is a normative resolution; henceforth the BoP shall be rested solely upon the opponent. As the opponent seems to presents her argument in a dialectical manner; I shall do so after defining a few terms. Liberty; Liberty is the quality of being to do whatever one would want; the free will for people to do anything. Security; Security is the act of concern over the people’s outlook and their action, whether for political or safety purposes. Greater; Of more worth The opponent starts out with a question; would one rather die or have one’s liberty violated? Death is the ultimate answer, for a life without liberty is an animalistic, brutish, robotic and undesirable life. We are human beings, with a will that is naturally free; every one of us has this moral worth, in which we ascribe as liberty. We use this liberty to the fullest in the state of nature, but it is precisely because we have used this liberty to the fullest that a state was needed, as the liberty of the people was to be protected by law. When law was implemented, a coercive force also had to be implemented; henceforth the government was developed in order to go with law. In time, the state became more defined, with more institutions to manage the people and the nation, but yet the state’s fundamental job is to find the Golden Means between authority and liberty. It is never harmful to have too much liberty; even Machiavelli, a staunch totalitarian, stated that “if one wishes to subjugate new colonies of people without military force, then one must leave as many of the old institutions and as much liberty as the people desired possible” This was how the Ottoman Empire was able to grasp onto the large empire that it held; officials in conquered territories held their jobs. Alexander the Great and his empire was another example; many of the old officials held power and did their jobs with proficiency, whilst the only change was that they now answered to different ministers. However, it is always harmful to have too much power. A tyrannical government is like HIV; it makes the institutions that protect the people from injustice unjustifiable. A tyrannical government cannot stop itself from evil; when there is no division of power, a tyrannical government will not stop because there is nothing to stop the corruption of a leader’s mind; Nazi Germany, whose monopoly of power laid upon one group of people, quickly (within 13 years) delivered Germany from what promised to be a new and strong Germany by invading Poland and other countries. “Once you have set foot towards the Dark Side, there is no turning back” is a particularly true statement to be said for tyrannical states. With this stated, I would like to refute the opponent’s cases: The opponent draws upon NSA as an infringement of liberty; I object. The NSA has never stopped anyone from doing what they willed. Accordingly, NSA’s job is to [2]: Collect (including through clandestine means), process, analyze, produce, and disseminate signals intelligence information and data for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes to support national and departmental missions Henceforth, it has no role in deferring the liberty; it cannot authorize arrests of terrorists and “people who threaten the tranquility of the nation” It can only process information mined from many places. The opponent then concedes here by saying that “frankly major civil rights compromise is immoral” Hence we must go deeper; liberty is a civil right, and the violation of any civil rights is never justified. The opponent states that the NSA has brought tranquility to the American nation; firstly, two objections. The path down tyranny starts with the government justifying civil rights violation; the “Enabling Act” that the Reichstag passed in 1933, which gave complete power to the Nazi Party, justified the violation of freedom of speech, freedom of press and freedom of expression for the tranquility of this nation. Obama is doing this in a much milder term; but he is still more or less innocent, because liberty has not been deferred. Albeit the “Patriot’s Act” was not as extreme when compared to the “Enabling Act” it was the possible start of the path down tyranny. Tyranny is a war waged against the people; dishonor is the violation of liberties of the people without any resistance. Churchill once said “Faced with a choice between dishonor and war, if one chooses dishonor, then we will have war” My second objection is this: This graph shows the amount of terrorist attacks since 1980; the NSA was established in 1952. For 28 years, the NSA mined data which was not used properly and henceforth saw the amount of terrorist attacks rise dramatically in 1982; it was not until 1987 when we see a sharp decrease in terrorist attacks due to the work of other organizations, like the FBI and CIA. It was not only until 9/11 when stricter measures were taken to decrease terrorist attacks that we can see an almost eradication of terrorism in the USA, and this was when the FBI and CIA introduced stricter measures. For its entirety, the NSA did not prevent any terrorist attacks; the data mined was useless and a violation to the rights of the common man. This is further proven by a study released by a NPO; it examined 225 terrorist incidents. Many of these incidents has resulted in the death of the person convicted for terrorism; in only four of these 225 cases was NSA data used to apprehend the terrorists. [1] Apart from these objections, we must look at this from a utilitarian point of view; the three fundamental rights of the common man is the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For liberty to be greater than security is to destroy the other two fundamental rights; the right to live freely and independently is destroyed because security makes people robots. If liberty is greater than security, then security would destroy the need to pursue happiness. Time constraints and my laziness have degraded the quality of this argument. I apologize. Back to you pro! [1] http://america.aljazeera.com...[2] http://www.nsa.gov...