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I Don't Have Anything to Hide

 

I can’t get enough of these anti-terror twits telling me my privacy doesn’t matter—or paying it lip service while quietly advocating the annihilation of human freedom. But I expect it from pundits. They have agendas—they’re supposed to advocate complete nonsense. It only really starts to infuriate me when I hear it from ordinary, everyday Americans. Joe blow Republicans who are supposed to be in favor of limited government.

 

“Oh, I don’t care if the government reads my e-mails. I don’t have anything to hide.”

 

Let me put that in bold: “I don’t have anything to hide.”

 

Let me put that in bold and all-caps, actually: “I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO HIDE.”

 

What are you morons talking about? Do you even know how friggin’ insane you’ve become advocating crap like that?

 

The founders didn’t set up personal liberties and privacy rights because we had something to hide. They did it because unwarranted government intrusion is wrong. Let me put that in bold and all-caps for you: UNWARRANTED GOVERNMENT INTRUSION IS WRONG. It’s like, ya know, a basic friggin’ principle of freedom—one of those basic principles we’re supposedly fighting these stupid terrorists to protect. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

 

You can’t just let the government read your e-mail. It’s wrong. It doesn’t matter if you have anything to hide. That’s completely beside the point. The point it, it’s none of their damn business.

 

And the only reason Joe Blow American is letting the government get away with this crap is because the intrusion isn’t blatant enough to be noticed. Listening to our phone calls, reading our e-mails, scanning our bank and credit card statements—people are okay with that because they don’t know for certain if its happening to them. It’s easy to dismiss. It’s easy for people to say the intrusion doesn’t hurt anybody.

 

But I can guarantee you one thing: the more noticeable the intrusion is, the less comfortable you are with it.

 

It’s easy for people to ignore, and be complicit with, forms of intrusion that are unseen. But people become uncomfortable when the intrusion is right before their eyes, where they can’t ignore it. Wiretaps may not make you nervous, but what if a law were passed stating it was illegal to keep your curtains closed, and that an FBI agent would be stationed outside your open curtains twenty-four hours a day just to check up on you. Would that make you nervous? I bet it would. But why? You don’t have anything to hide, do you? If the FBI wants to see what you’re making for dinner, what do you care? As long as it stops the terrorists, right?

 

Bullcrap. The idea of the FBI watching you cook turkey burgers is so unmistakably wrong that no one can doubt the outlandish violation of personal freedom it represents. But here’s the thing: There is no moral difference between the government peeking through your windows and peeking through your e-mail. The actual intrusion is every bit the same.

 

You don’t want an FBI agent standing at your kitchen window because you have something to hide. You don’t want him standing there because what you’re making for dinner is nobody’s business but yours. And that’s the exact same reason you don’t want that FBI agent listening to your phone calls or reading your e-mails. Because it’s none of their friggin’ business. They have no right. No more right than they do to bust down your door and start searching through your cabinets for bomb-making manuals, jus’ cuz.

 

“Whadda ya mean we can’t search your underwear drawer for chemical weapons? You don’t have anything to hide, do you?”

 

Do you?

 

Yes, you do—you have your privacy to hide—and your nation to protect. Let me tell you something: The United States isn’t a nation because it has a government, or a military, or any other institution. It’s a nation because it has principles. One of the simplest, and most basic being that the government has no right to intrude on your liberty unless it has actual, documented, court-reviewed reason to believe you may be a threat. It isn’t something we can take lightly. It isn’t something we can throw away just because the “world changed” on 9/11. It’s a principle, damn it—we’re defined by it. It’s what we stand for. It’s part of what our soldiers have fought and died for. You can’t just throw it away because you’re scared of the terrorists.

 

Short of the plague, or all-out nuclear warfare, there is nothing the terrorists can do to destroy this nation. The three thousand lives they took on September 11th did nothing to threaten our stability. The effect on the economy was negligible. There was no lasting, or devastating damage to our infrastructure. We are stronger than that. I mean good lord, look at New Orleans. An entire American city is wiped off the map, and the impact across the country is—is what? Nothing! Are we all starving? Has the government collapsed? Did anyone really feel an effect outside of gas going up a dollar a gallon? If high heating bills are all the destruction of an American city can bring to bear, then our infrastructure must be pretty damned strong.

 

Let me tell you this: You can deploy an army of suicide bombers in every coffee shop of every American city and it will barely dent the infrastructure of this nation. It’s too strong. But we can’t forget that our infrastructure—our government, our institutions, our economy—is built on the foundation of our principles. Which is why the only thing the terrorists can do to bring about our demise is change the way we think about those principles. That will destroy us. That will kill off whatever worth we have as a people.

 

A certain guy named Abraham Lincoln understood this:

 

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

 

Whatever riches of our nation must be scarified, whatever buildings must fall or lives must be lost, it is our principles that must stand the test of time. They are what make us a nation—and more importantly, what make us a free and fair nation, the kind worth defending. Principles cannot be defeated by bombs or bullets. They can only be defeated by the people who hold them, when they neglect them in the face of fear.

 

Lincoln wasn’t talking about terrorists, but his words carry weight for all time, and all trials. Roosevelt wasn’t talking about terrorists either, but when he said we have “nothing to fear but fear itself,” he, like Lincoln, was speaking across all time and all generations. It is fear that threatens us—fear alone that can destroy us, by destroying our principles. And it is nothing short of fear that compels our citizenry to cast aside their rights in the face of terrorism. You allow your government to check up on you—to listen to your phone calls, read your e-mail, and dig into what books you’re checking out of the library—because you’re afraid if you don’t give up that privacy you might die in a terrorist attack.

 

Maybe we really have lost something. The “Greatest Generation” had no qualms about putting themselves in harms way to defend the principles of this nation. We, on the other hand, refuse even to take the remote risk of death. I have never served in the military, nor do I ever plan to. I am entirely too much of a yellow-bellied pussy to ever do such a thing. And furthermore, I don’t think the United States is the greatest country on the planet. I don’t think we’re even remotely close to as great as we can and should be. Even so, I have enough pride in my country to say this without hesitation: I would rather die by terrorist attack than sacrifice my right to privacy.

 

If we’re too afraid to stand up for our most basic principles, then really—what’s the point? Why bother? Why wave the flags and sing the songs? Why even bother to call ourselves a nation?  If there isn’t a deep, shared, inalienable belief in principles at the base of it, then it’s nothing more than pointless symbolism. Any tyrannical dictator can rally his people to wave flags and sing songs about how great it is to live in whatever nation we’re talking about. Most skilled dictators can even get most of their people to believe it really is great. But if there is no freedom beneath it, no collection of principles shared and held at all costs, then what is it, really? It is freedom? No—it’s a show. A pretense of freedom. A shared illusion of freedom that doesn’t really exist, and isn’t worth living for.

 

And as Orwell foresaw, all this is lost on the proles, the entertainment so compelling, the illusion of freedom so well crafted that the elimination of our rights goes unnoticed.

 

Go on, America—shrug. Shrug and say you don’t care. If you don’t even have any principles, then maybe you’re right—maybe you really don’t have anything to hide.

 

 

 

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