Credit to Mike Luckovich“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

-Muad’Dib; Frank Herbert, Dune

By Austin Barrington

When Americans feel threatened, we react – we fight back. But what happens when we push too far, when we react too harshly? What happens when we, perceiving a threat, overcompensate and suddenly find ourselves offering threats of our own?

Kate Martin recently appeared at Dickinson College and gave an informational lecture on the Constitutionality of secret domestic surveillance by the U.S. government. Early in the speech, she stated that she did not want to argue conclusively for one side or another; rather, she wished to lay down an understanding of both the pros and the cons of NSA surveillance, leaving for us the difficult work of deciding what actually makes sense.

However, she did not flinch from throwing out open critiques of “government officials in this administration”, claiming that they are convinced they are operating legally and constitutionally; they are convinced that the current legal framework has reduced the risk of government abuse; they are convinced that civil libertarians don’t understand how NSA surveillance works (or that “we” don’t appreciate how useful the surveillance is in preventing terrorist attacks).

And then she said it: “We have built the potential for a police state.” That’s a scary thought – a real and tangible threat. But in order to clarify her vision of what the real threat is, Martin quoted Associate Justice Lewis F. Powell; “Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent. The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power, nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of government action in private conversation. For private dissent, no less than open public discourse, is essential to our free society.”

Does this actually happen? Has the U.S. government ever actually threatened to become a police state and restrict our citizens’ rights to lawful dissent? George Herring argues that it has, in a chapter entitled “None Who Can Make Us Afraid”; in 1798, fearing a war with France, Congress passed “several vaguely worded and blatantly repressive Sedition Acts” (From Colony to Superpower, 87). These Sedition Acts allowed the U.S. government to imprison any citizens who published writings that even smelled of political dissent; and they were allowed to sunset in 1800.

Early American history aside, Martin herself claims that the government has undertaken two “massive abuses” of its powers in her adult life: once to target political dissent and to change the outcome of an election (referring perhaps to Nixon’s illegal surveillance measures); and then again to claim the right to act outside or even contrary to the law and to do so in secret (referring to President George W. Bush’s extralegal Terrorist Surveillance Program).

So what do we do? We are a people of movers and shakers, we are descendants of revolutionaries and are ourselves reactionaries – we fight back. But let us not react too strongly. As a humble undergraduate student, I advise all of us, myself included, to act with wisdom and discretion in responding to this potential threat. And let us not forget that it is just that, a Potential Threat.

That said, Kate Martin, a certified expert on the legal systems put in place to protect our civil liberties, expressed doubt on whether said legal systems are adequate to protect against a police state. However, she also mentioned, exposing a surprisingly Constructivist perspective, that she believed that the legal framework was not the deciding factor, but rather how well the Congress can function and who gets elected to office (I’m assuming she was emphasizing the Oval Office).

I agree with Ms. Martin on both of these points: no legal framework is perfect and I’m sure we can all agree that electing competent leadership is generally a good idea. I also agree with Justice Powell when he asserted that both public and private dissent are vital to sustaining our American society. But let us act (and react) without fear; let us instead show Prudence by suffering what evils we can in order to avoid, if possible, the abolition of those invaluable forms to which we are accustomed.