People willing to trade their freedom for security…

September 7, 2006

The latest Zogby poll included a [tag]civil-liberties[/tag] question I haven’t seen asked in a long while. It turns out, those who generally claim to be most concerned about big government are the same ones who are willing to welcome a voluntary police state.

Poll respondents were asked about specific methods and asked if they’d favor them if it meant “increased protection from terrorist acts.” The results — particularly the partisan breakdowns — were rather surprising.

* “Allowing video surveillance of public places” — Overall, 80% are comfortable with this. The difference among the parties was minimal.

* “Allowing your purse, handbag, briefcase, backpack, or packages to be searched at random anywhere” — This was far more controversial. About half of Dems and independents would tolerate this, but two-thirds of Republicans (66%) said they’d favor this method.

* “Allowing regular roadblocks to search vehicles” — Here, Dems and independents started to balk, with support dropping to around 40%, but Republicans thought this was fine too, with 62% supporting the tactic.

* “Allowing your car to be searched at random” — Again, Dems and independents were uncomfortable with this (support in the mid 30s), but Republicans still gave this the thumbs-up, with 60% support.

* “Allowing your telephone conversations to be monitored” — Dems and independents continued to resist, but 56% of Republicans said this would be alright with them.

* “Allowing your mail to be searched at random” — This one did the worst among all groups, but still about half (49%) of Republicans said they’d favor this method.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.

Perhaps in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when there was a widespread sense of panic and dread, it’s easier to imagine Americans saying, “I don’t care about freedom; just keep me safe.” But most of the country has had time to reflect a bit, and the overwhelming fear has subsided.

But for most Republicans — the party of small, limited government — the sense is still, “Let the government do whatever it wants.”

Video surveillance of public places is probably the least invasive, but according to this poll, most Republicans are unconcerned with the idea of government officials searching their belongings, car, and mail, while monitoring their phone calls. All under the guise of preventing terrorism.

Am I the only one surprised by this?

Not surprised at all…

  • The government is under Republican control. Ask the same questions under a Democratic president and watch the difference.
    These people are no longer Americans. Their slogan is, “:my party right or wrong, but of course it’s always right.”

  • This is pretty shocking to me, and a reflection of the lack of knowledge in the population at large regarding the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Why don’t we just repeal the fourth amendment and let the Government kick in our doors at midnight to see if we are breaking any laws. I’m currently reading Viktor Klemperer’s “I Will Bear Witness,” the diary he kept from 1933 to 1945 while living near Dresden Germany. As a Jew (even though he had converted to Protestantism), he of course was subject to the kind of indignities described in this post, including searches of his house for weapons, confiscation of precious metals, identity cards, forced relocation to the Jewish quarter of Dresden, etc., etc. The fact that he was a WWI vet and married to a protestant woman spared him the worst.

    Got Fascism?

  • I agree with JMG. It was facinating to hear Rush criticize the Plame investigation earlier this week. He sounded exactly like we did during the Starr investigation. Same arguments, vocabulary, etc.

  • Hopefully when yearly 9/11 fever dies down the numbers will be lower. Hopefully.

    I suspect brown people would get these “random” seaches quite a bit more often than white people.

    These kind of things are like burning down the haystack to find the needle.

    Fifty thousand per year die on our highways. We need some perspective.

  • No surprise at all. Consider it in light of John Dean’s latest book that current Republicans have a strong desire for an authoritarian structure. They need daddy looking out for them. They are comforted being talked to as if they are 10-year olds (confirmed by Andy Card at the 04 Repub convention). Fear and shame are what now drives too many people in our great land. It makes them unworthy of the wisdom laid down in 1776 and 1787. And so here we are in the midst of a constitutional crisis.

    As for me, my liberty is worth more than my life.
    My citizenship is worth more than my money.
    I do not fear the Other.
    I am not ashamed of my body, my education, my curiosity, my station in life.

    Unfortunately, you say stuff like that around Texas Republicans and you get some very funny looks.

    Keep fighting, citizens.

  • Why is it that when Democrats are in control of government all federal employees are ‘jack-booted thugs’, but when Republicans are in control anything goes?

    Fortunately in this case the ‘deciders’ are the authors of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Thank goodness it is difficult to amend the constitution otherwise body odor and snippy attitudes would be a capital offenses.

    Of course, a lot depends on the circumstances of the search. Searching handbags as you get on a plane seems reasonable, whereas random searches on the street are clearly unconstitutional.

    Once Democrats regain control of the executive branch Republicans will all become civil libertarians.

  • Pacato, You said it all. Americans don’t give a crap about the Fourth Amendment because they know nothing about it — or the rest of the Constitution for that matter. This country would be ripe for a fascist takeover except for the fact the most Americans are too stupid even to pull that off. Virtual bread and circuses (i.e., TeeVee) is all that matters.

  • This is why I am worried that the Republican party will continue to support authoritarian candidates. If the Republican party nominates cadidates that are amoral and corrupt authority figures, the party members will follow. If they happen to select a civil libertarian with otherwise conservative values, they’ll support them as well. The key is to find a responsible authority figure who will not abuse his or her power. I can’t control the direction of the Republican party, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

  • Not surprising at all. That’s why the transgressions by the Bush administration against civil liberties don’t resonate as an issue. The public, as these poll results show, would welcome far more intrusive behavior by the government.

    This won’t change, as long as both parties feed the perception that terrorism is a real and constant threat to every American, every single day.

    Meanwhile, far more important problems go unattended. We’ve been paralyzed as a nation by a ghost.

  • Well last time I was at Starbuck’s it was abundantly clear that most were not concerned with a slew people listening in on their cell phone conversations, so why would they care if the government was doing it.

    I think this is the gage that answers the question, “Have the terrorist won ?”.
    They have, I don’t believe they are hell bent on killing, just altering our way of life. When we give up our most cherished freedoms it’s a huge victory for them and they know it. I think deep down inside, they don’t hate our freedom, they hate our opulence and decadence, and by proving that we are willing to give up the foundations this country is built upon, they are showing/proving to the world, that we are a country with no principles, no real moral convictions. We have become a country more dedicated to money then morals, and they are a people more dedicate to morals then money.

  • I’m not surprised. I’ve been reading (a lot) about the rise of Nazism for more than two years. As I’ve said before, I don’t think the United States is about to become a Fourth Reich, but some of the seeds are there.

    I’ve been thinking about this a good deal lately. I’ve always proceeded with the presumption that the Right is simply misguided and ignorant. The more I’ve considered it, I think there are Americans who aren’t misguided at all. They are plainly in favor of totalitarianism. (I include some on the far left because there’s no practical difference between extremists.)
    Of course, these people think they’re on the right, protected and empowered side, that THEY couldn’t be victims. And many wouldn’t be.

    We have forgotten our history and our political origins. We’re both fearful and arrogant. We’re divided more than we’ve been since 1865. The people most inclined to despotism get a daily feeding of hate on their radios and on Fox TV. Already, many rights have been infringed, and with almost no complaint.

    No, I’m not surprised at all. Fear (and lies) always opens the door to loss of freedom. Many Americans are afraid of freedom, and always have been. America’s flirtation with revocation of law and rights, however, has less to do with fear than with irrational hatred and personal greed.

  • Republicanism is anti-democratic, its that simple. They see government as merely an impediment to the gospel of the free market, in which corporations’ profitability is the only end, and any means to achieve more profitability; outsourcing, tax subsidies, incorporating offshore to avoid taxes, etc. are all acceptable. The problem with this idea of a free-market economy is that 1) There is no such thing as a free market when government subsidizes monopolies with taxpayer money, which is what these ‘free-market’ republicans are all about. 2) Government CREATES markets, by creating currencies, exchange rates, trade policies, regulations, etc. To tie this rambling post to the point of CB’s post, what is going on in this country right now is the eradication of the middle class and the ushering in of a global corporatocracy, where corporations are the kings, their CEO’s and mouthpieces the barons and lords, and the rest of us are serfs. IT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW AND IT IS BY DESIGN. By gutting the middle class, you gut democracy; for it is the middle class that the founding fathers realized would be the safekeepers of our democracy, what they called the yeomanry. Without the balancing force of the general population who care about things like public services, public commons, affluence, safety, etc, monied interests would attempt to create a system of wealthy ruling elites governing the masses of the permanently impoverished. This is what we fought our revolution to break free from. So, the wealthy ruling elites, basically the republican party, use everything within their power, principally fear in this day and age, to scare the masses. These poll results are simply the fruition of their efforts

  • Not surprising. Had the suggestions been to limit business or corporate activities in any way, I am sure there would have been more opposition by Republicans. Personal liberties? Feh–they would allow random searches of wombs and urethras even without a terrorist threat.

  • ***…except for the fact….***
    ——————————————–Ed Stephan

    Ed, I think you’re forgetting the one variable—the “can’t-quite-be-measured” variable that still scares the pants off Herr Bush and his squabbling little minions—that there may well be a substantial number of Americans who would take up arms against such an attempt. Remember—Herr Bush does not possess the military force necessary to complete either the Afghan expedition, or the Iraqi occupation; he certainly does not possess the force necessary to successfully conquer the United States of America. A fascistic takeover-attempt would play out as an “invasion-from-within” scenario—and I’d wager that in a pinch, even the “NascarMan” crowd would answer the call to “repel the invaders; drive them into the sea….”

  • Let me clarify: Modern Day Republicanism, or rather the trickle down, supply side Reagan republicans.

  • The actual threat of a terrorist attack taking the life of a US citizen on US soil is less than your chance of being shot, mugged or killed in an auto accident. Yet, it has been made into the gravest of threats upon our nation. Bullsh*t! There are too few Patrick Henrys in America anymore. The last stanza in the national anthem, the one about this being “the land of the brave and the home of the free,” should be deleted because it’s no longer applicable to this country. Especially in light of this Zogby poll.

  • Not surprising to me either.

    Has anyone heard anyone say “As long as you are doing nothing wrong, it shouldn’t matter if you’re searched, stopped, etc.”? I’ve heard this line of reasoning for a while. It’s not right, but as long as this is the mindset, it’s gonna be hard to make them see that they’re giving up their freedoms.

  • When are we going to hear a democrat, or anyone for that matter, stand up and say: “We are Americans! We are brave, and we do not live our lives in fear! We will not allow terorrists or leaders to make us cower in fear! We are the land of the free and home of the brave! Shame on Bu$h and the neoconservatives for using fear as a weapon against our own citizens! Shame on them for giving victory to the terorrists by decimating our bill of rights and constitution! Shame on them for dis-honoring the men and women who shed blood and gave their lives fighting for the priciples that make America the greatest nation on earth!”

  • The reason that most Repulicans and even a large amount of Dems and Independents would allow random searchs is because they never think they will be the one searched.

  • Absolutely true in the case of the most paranoid far-right extreme Bush apologist I know. He claims he has nothing to hide, so why hide it? How ’bout his working mainly for cash as a mechanic for 45 years and not reporting his parts as taxable inventory? How ’bout those unregistered guns from the gun shows and the profits from sales there? How ’bout voting absentee when he didn’t really qualify?
    How ’bout it, Jim?

  • “I don’t have anything to hide, so why should I worry about such things?”

    That was the statement of a Republican acquaintance of mine on this subject a few months ago when the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” first became public knowledge. And he said it with the implication in his tone that my opposition had something to do with my having “something to hide.”

    And another synonym for “Republican” is apparent: sheep. Actually, that’s a terrible insult to a nice animal.

  • This certainly explains the Turd Blossom strategy. All terror all the time. Dems, liberals and civil libertarians will never truly succeed in the national security debate as long as two thirds of the republican party are such cowards and hide-under-the-bed fraidy cats. They truly don’t deserve the freedoms they so loudly proclaim and so easily surrender

    The terrorists are winning

  • It does surprise me. In order to do the activist work that my wife and I do here in Pasadena, CA, we have to believe that people are worth the effort. We’re inspired to do this work by our faith and a belief that all human beings bear the face of God (with many it’s just harder to see it).

    It’s rare that somebody concerned with peace and social justice in a society gets to see the fruits of his/her work. The best that any of us can hope for is to help plant the seeds and realize whatever it is that we’ve been gifted with.

    So don’t let this news stop you or anybody else reading this blog from doing the work required to take our country back.

  • Wait until you have a Democrat president, then ask the same questions again.

    I guarantee the republicans will squeal in alarm at Big Brother’s usurpations…

    Guarantee it!
    [even more so if the next Dem Pres should be black!]

    Republican positions are based on situational ethics.

    When a brother republican has the presidency they are like the Doberman’s in Orwell’s Animal Farm. All yip and yap and yahoo.

    When a Dem is in power… they are tempted to blow up Federal Buildings and sieze ridges in Idaho.

    These are dangerous and atavistic creatures.
    Hold overs from the stone age.
    Knuckle-draggers.

    It is one of the great misfortunes of Mankind that the genes which helped him survive the ice age and the jungle, are… when expressed in today’s population, totally counterproductive to Democracy and the future of humanity.

  • Comment by #11
    ScottW — 9/7/2006 @ 11:37 am:

    “Have the terrorist won ?”

    That really is a sharp thought.
    I’ve not seen it before.

    Especially powerful when followed up with your next sentence:

    They have, I don’t believe they are hell bent on killing, just altering our way of life.

    At any rate… it is one of those encapulations that one can see leading to a formal op-ed, or… even a book.

  • You have to understand the Repupblican logic, which, while sad, is still remarkably easy to follow.

    Most Republicans are Whity McWhiteWhites. They have a good chunk of blue collar types but an even higher percentage of white-dollar types. Large numbers of the most affluent Americans align themselves with Republicans. In true Stepford Wives-ian fashion, many of them kinda look alike, sound alike, act alike.

    Therefore, of course THEY don’t mind invasions of privacy, because they know their privacy will never be invaded! They’re not POOR! They’re not BROWN! They all go to the same clubs, drive the same cars, bang the same tennis instructors…

    Granted I’m being very judgmental and generalizsing a great deal, but amongst the GOP-ers I know, that is the prevailing opinion- “What invasion of privacy? I’VE got nothing to hide!” The same as we’ve heard from thie Administration over and over-if you’ve got nothing to hid, you’ve got nothing to fear. I’d add to that, that if you look Republican, you’ve got nothing to fear FROM Republicans. For them, invasion of privacy is just as vague a concept as knowing how to perform at the Apollo’s Amateur night. It’s something you’ll never have to worry about, so don’t worry about it.

    The real trick is when the Administration starts getting even more totalitarian. Imagine if they wanted to start confiscating guns, because they believed terrorists were in America, and the only way to insure they didn’t get firearms is if they controlled all of them. Imagine if they installed open spies to watch over yoiu while you worked, not only making sure you didn’t do anything to assist the terrorists, but also wanted to make sure you were being productive. Imagine if they started insisting that you be able to account for your whereabouts constantly by recording where you go, perhaps by using a State-issued ID before being allowed to enter or exit any public area, any store (including porn stores, Victoria’s Secret), any doctor’s office (hiding a nasty case of the herp? Your government wants to know), any apartment building (hey, you don’t live here, who are you visiting, and why? And how often?), any public school (why are you walking into your son’s high school at 1 in the afternoon? What did he do? Must’ve been something baaaaad, maybe the government ought to know what it is). And we’re also supposed to trust the government that they’ll never use that information against us, even if we think that information is so innocuous it couldn’t possibly be used against us.

    Invasions of privacy many of us have seemingly agreed to, could expand any number of ways. Rich white people who feel untouchable don’t worry about crap like that, because they’re all part of the safe club, the “people like us call the shots, and we leave each other alone” club. They won’t disagree to it until it starts to affect their own sense of security, until they realize maybe the people invading their privacy can’t be completely trusted. And by then, it’s too late.

    Stop being stupid America.

  • Benjamin Franklin said it best:

    They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.

  • Note on Nazis:

    I found it very interesting that some of the most heinous Nazi personalities, such as Heydrich and even Eichman, weren’t Nazi fanatics, or particularly anti-Jewish. They used the party and its authoritarianism to simply advance their careers, or in the case of Eichman, to have a career. And as I’ve mentioned before, quite a few notables, such as Hans Frank, the butcher of Poland, were initially opposed to the Nazification of the German justice system and the secrecy and intrusion of the Gestapo. These men were not so much “true believers” as opportunists who jettisoned their principles or had none.

  • I agree, JMG. If Clinton were tapping their phones and opening their mail it’d be a different story.

  • Not surprising at all. We are already under heavy video surveillance: walk into any Mall, many Parking Lots, etc. In fact Amerikans love this shit, look how quick someone who has just lost his entire family to some gruesome family pops up on GMA or similiar pap to talk about it. The Airports have us used to folks rifling through our belongings. This past Labor Day we had roadblocks up looking for drunk drivers. It’s not that much of a leap.

  • I am surprised. Perhaps it is the way the questions were framed, but I don’t buy this. Also remember that the Republicans are a shrinking group as more and more people self identify as either an Independant or a Democrat. I also think that there are people who will trust the party in power as long as it is their party. Sadly often these people are self identified as “Christian” and can not grasp that one of their own (that would be W) would sell out their country. It only has to impact them personally as they realize that the cops will stop them randomly as they are leaving the gun show, or one of their kids goes to jail for an illegally siezed joint, before they get the idea about the 4th ammendment.

  • I find everyone’s disgust over these results rather disheartening, to tell you the truth. I think one needs to take a cold hard look at these numbers ….. is it that those silly (old style) conservs have been correct when they said progressive America is out of step with the mainstream?

    Trust me, I hope not. But let’s not resort to talking about how stupid America(ns) have become, and how we deserve to be a second rate country and on and on.

    Figure out the pyschology: what makes someone rely on the idea that as long as I am not doing anything wrong, I have nothing to hide? To me this is a classic rationale from someone who feels like they are of the same ilk as the one wielding the power.

    Address the psychology rather than continue to deepen the divide. For the record, I do not want to be videotaped in public without my consent, I do not want people looking in my bags at random, I believe a cop needs at least reasonable suspician to pull me over (and really, even this one makes me cringe) … but …. I do not think people are idiots because they are afraid of terrorism. Is the jump from fear to trading in liberties irrational? Or does it reflect a trade off that might be more considered? What are the underlying assumptions that would make such a trade off seem more reasonable? Are these assumptions sound?

    I don’t know — I am troubled by this us or them portrait of America. Is that what is really going on?

  • It’s not surprising. Read John Dean’s book “Conservatives Without Conscience”. Authoritarian personalities accept this kind of crap without question.

  • Ahh! JMG beat me to the punch with comment #2 above. Now me, I happen to know I would be still opposed to unreasonable searches and other invasions of privacy if Democrats were in control of government, because I always have been. But of course I have also often thought that a principle difference between a liberal and what passes for a conservative these days (in addition to a working knowlege of grade school arithmetic) is an ability to take the long view on something once in a while.

  • Not surprised about the right-wing percentages. Republicans support laws that impinge on personal rights already, with their support of laws that dictate who you can have sex with and how, who you can marry, etc.

    However, I am shocked that half of democrats support random searches of personal belongings. I understand searches based on boarding a plane or entering certain buildings, etc, but ANY random search? That is frightening.

    Although I do agree that there is a certain bias based on partisanship, I doubt there would be a complete flip in the responses from democrats if Clinton was in office. I suspect there would be a larger change in the republican responses, who would be stuck between the “big government” of the “washington bureaucrats” of the Clinton administration and their fundamental disregard for personal privacy (unless it is about owning guns or paying taxes, of course).

  • “I suspect brown people would get these “random” seaches quite a bit more often than white people.”
    [Dale]

    Sad, but true. I suspect these numbers more closely reflect the race (also economic status) of the people polled rather than their political party.

    I think that when asked such questions, people do a little internal editing. They don’t hear: Would YOU object to having YOUR purse searched at random?

    Most people (regardless of party affiliation) would answer YES to this question simply because they would realize what a pain in the arse it would be.

    What they hear is: Do you think the police are LIKELY to ever search YOUR purse at random?

    Oh, golly, the police would never search ME, I’m [any number of ‘police-proof’ characteristics].

    That’s where the No answers come from.

  • I haven’t posted in a while, but my reaction is similar to CJ’s–amazement at how many Democrats support invasive government. If terrorists hate us for our freedoms, then they no longer have a pretext for hating us. We are a nation fit to be slaves.

    At any rate, not having done anything wrong or having nothing to hide is not a legitimate rationalization against government violation. A tyranny doesn’t care if you’ve done nothing wrong, so long as the example it makes of you will inspire fear in others. A personal enemy sanctioned by legitimate authority to search your belongings is free to harass at will. Objective innocence is not even the point.

  • You’re right, NeilS, the term “banality of evil” was coined by Ms. Arnedt. I’m reading that particular book right now, and it’s very good. But the characterizations of Heydrich, etc. came from other sources I can’t recall offhand.

    Regarding Eichman, the revised version of Arnedt’s book adds that, although Eichman was pronounced “normal” by Israeli psychiatrists, they hid their actual determination that he was extremely attracted to violence and killing. In other words, he should have been in a nuthouse, but that fact would have hampered the case against him.

    This is problem with applying a civilized legal process to monsters. Civilized justice and law were never designed to address such horrible crimes. As a result, verdicts are open to legal criticism.

  • Hey, Alibubba?(40)… Not to be picky, or anything but Neil S was right; it’s Arendt, not Arnedt. I know it looks screwy (and is hard to pronounce) either way, but I gotta defend the right of my genes to be as linguistically weird as they wish to be, no matter how much trouble it causes. I have trouble pronouncing Mfume and nobody sems to pity me…

  • If a Democrat were president, these Republican’ts would be singing a different tune. Yes, they are Republicans first, Americans second.

  • Wow. What a blog where not only are the commentors familar with Hannah Arendt, they are actually reading her work.

    She wrote a lot about the rise of totalitrianism. Unfortunately that topic has become relevant again.

  • You’re right, libra & NeilS. It’s Hannah “Arednt.” I arendt much of a speller. It’s also Eichmann instead of Eichman.

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