Live Free or Die

February 2004

(The following is excerpted from that novel I’m working on. It has been slightly altered to accommodate this format.)

Earlier that night, President Bush had addressed the nation, announcing that Saddam Hussein and his sons had forty-eight hours to leave Iraq or face the “full force and might” of the US military “at a time of our choosing.” At a time of who’s choosing, Mr. President? Mine? I don’t think so. Say it right: “At a time of my choosing, because I want this war.”

But who was I kidding? Everyone wanted the war. It was just me an a few million other lunatics who were against it—not even close to a majority. But for all they had tried to convince me that they were right, I still didn’t believe them. They had terrified me with their warning system, bludgeoned me with their rhythmic, ritualistic song Saddam is a threat; Saddam is terror; Saddam has WMD. They had tried everything, and I still didn’t believe it. I still thought they were a bunch of liars and thieves.

But it’s one thing to believe and another to know; one to feel, instinctively, that a crime is afoot, but another to know it for certain. I didn’t know anything for certain. I didn’t know if there were WMD, I didn’t know if Saddam was a terrorist, I didn’t know if bin Laden was alive… I didn’t know why we attacked Afghanistan, or what we’d gained from it, or whether or not we’d actually conquered it. I didn’t know.

I felt so much like the beleaguered Winston Smith in Orwell’s 1984. Winston feels, instinctively, that things were better at some time in the past, but since he is unable to confirm or deny anything he believes about the past, there is no way for him to know.

And since Bush would not document word one about why we so desperately needed to attack Iraq—since he refused to provide anything more than grainy satellite photos and a vial of would-be anthrax, I had no way to confirm or deny his assertions. All I had was my lingering doubt—my constant, subtle, but irrepressible belief that I was being lied to.

And they had a defense for that, too: We can’t tell you the whole truth. If we did, we’d be giving ourselves away to the terrorists.

And whenever I heard that I just threw my hands up. It was the death of democracy. The pure, unadulterated destruction of human freedom. You have to tell the truth! You have to tell all of it! There is no freedom without honesty!

Freedom isn’t freedom unless not just you, but every person, and every piece of information that surrounds you, is free. Without that, none of us can have any thought—or create any idea—that is entirely our own. As long as our information is biased—as long as the facts are distorted—then any conclusions we draw from that information are as distorted and biased as the information itself.

The people of the United States are in favor of the war.

Of course they were, but those people weren’t free. Their opinions weren’t their own. Maybe there was evidence of WMD. Maybe Saddam Hussein was a threat to national security. Maybe there was justification for the war, and maybe, somewhere in the halls of the White House—or that ranch in Texas—there was proof—demonstrable, irrefutable proof—that we absolutely had to go to war. But since the people were forced to form their opinions based only on what they were willing to tell us, then there was no way for anyone to know for certain. Except for them.

And the pundits said, you have to trust them. They have only your best interests in mind.

Of course they did. Stalin, Hitler, and Ho Chi Min only had the best interests of their people in mind. Castro and Pinochet too. All those leaders—every leader in history asked their people to trust them—to believe them even though crucial information was being withheld. Trust me, they said, all of them—trust me—I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have to.

It doesn’t matter why information is being withheld. It doesn’t matter if it’s for a nefarious purpose or if it’s legitimately for the sake of security. If the government has control of the information, then they have control of the opinions people form on the basis of that information. And a people whose opinions are controlled by the government are not free. They can’t be. It’s a logical impossibility.

And what angered me—what saddened me beyond all else was that we caused this. You, me—everybody. We ceded our freedom in a time of trauma without even pausing to consider the consequences. And you know why? Because we’re afraid. Because we’re so terrified the terrorists will blow up another skyscraper that we could give two shits about our freedom. They can take our rights, they can search us, they can listen to our phone calls, they can lie to us, they can lead us into wars without telling us why, and we’re glad to let it happen so long as they tell us 9/11 will never happen again. We’re so impish and weak and terrified that I swear we’d beat ourselves over the head with bricks if they could somehow convince us that it would help the war on terror.

But what we’ve forgotten—hell, what we never understood—is that freedom doesn’t come without risk. The chance that you’ll die in a terrorist attack is the price you pay for living in a free country. Even in an Orwellian world, even if you controlled every movement, every thought, and every piece of information, you still couldn’t stop it. But if our doors are open—if we are freely allowed to read and think and congregate—go where we want to, live the lives we choose—then there is always the risk that someone will turn those freedoms against us. That’s what happened on 9/11, and everything we did thereafter was proof of our inability to deal with the limitations of our own freedom.

And so long as this is so, there’s one phrase that should be stripped from every wall and every license plate—every book and every sign—every store window and every scrap of paper it is written on:

Live free or die.

Because we’re not willing to take those kind of chances. We don’t care enough. God bless Big Brother. Freedom is slavery. Fuck America.

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