Are We Giving Up More Than We Gain: THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

MURROW VS. MCCARTHY: THE LESSONS ARE AS IMPORTANT TODAY



In the golden days of the Athenian democracy, people were required to get involved in their democracy or be fined for not being a good citizen. Today, we do not have to worry about being fined or jailed for not helping to protect and preserve our democracy; nevertheless, “Goodnight and good luck!” , a documentary that describes precisely what can happen if we are not vigilant about our freedoms under democracy should be must viewing for the youth of America.

Young people must be made to understand that their democracy is no longer a guarantee, something that they can take for granted and expect it will be there in the morning. .

. This prized documentary depicts Joseph McCarthy’s attempts to tear this country asunder with his self-publicizing witch hunts aimed at finding a communist under virtually every bed; yet while his intentions were self-serving and modeled after Richard Milhous Nixon’s actions to curry favor and attention from the electorate, the fact remains that Joseph McCarthy actually did more damage to this country than any single person in this country’s short history. We were within a hairs-breadth of seeing our democracy sacrificed to eliminate a hypothetical communist threat.

. There are many useful lessons that can be derived from a movie that shows us how easily our basic freedoms can be manipulated and how democracy can be sacrificed in order to satisfy narrow interests, a short-term perspective or a particular bias... It is a lesson too easily forgotten that if freedom and liberty are taken for granted, they can be too easily lost. Michel de Montaigne commented on the fragility of our type of government one hundred years ago. He recognized that while democracy represented an ideal, it was also a concept that could be easily transmuted into something else, a form of tyranny if the public were not vigilant..

Now, we are facing a different kind of challenge. We are engaged in fighting an invisible enemy, terrorism, and in the process, our government tells us that it is necessary to sacrifice certain of those inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution in order to win this war between good and evil.. The questions that we must ask ourselves as citizens of a democracy is whether in the process of protecting ourselves against such an enemy, it is necessary for us to surrender the very thing that terrorism is opposed to, our way of life.

One posit the question if we so willingly give up our freedoms, haven’t we already lost to the “terrorists? Is giving up privacy, the First Amendment rights, habeas corpus and sacrificing the laws that made it illegal to station armed troops on American soil, posse comitatus, too much of a price to pay?

These are not trivial issues that should be decided by a government made up of one fundamentally the one party that is in control that owes its allegiance to a very narrow base with its own agenda; these are issues that should be discussed from one to the other end of the country in town forums where everyone is entitled to a hearing and the outcome voted on in a referendum.. We cannot afford to succumb to scare tactics when our very liberty is at stake; nor should the American people have our Constitution modified or changed unless it is the will of the people to do so.

It is instructive to realize that had not the esteemed Mr. Murrow confronted the misguided and self-serving Senator from Wisconsin who had the country accusing each other of being communists, today, we might have found ourselves suffering greater repression and loss of our freedoms.

It took the courage of CBS and its, director, Fred F. Friendly, a fighter for democratic causes, and the brilliant and acerbic reporter Edward R. Murrow to challenge his assertions and ultimately bring down the Senator while president Eisenhower stood mostly on the sidelines unwilling to confront this powerful for of reaction. It is instructive how close we came to tyranny.

. The lesson to be learned here is whether we will see threats to our way of life as a more of a potential danger to our democratic form of government than any hypothetical challenge by abstract menace referred to as “terrorism.” As a people, we must also be cognizant of the fact the government may not have our best interests in mind and that such actions are incompatible with what the Founding Fathers had envisioned for this country. As free citizens, this question is too important to let others settle it for us, even the government.

Respectfully submitted,

Les Aaron