Ed,
If Security is valuable even without any Liberty whatsoever, but Liberty isn't valuable without Security, then Security is more valuable than Liberty is.
If Liberty is valuable even without any Security whatsoever, but Security isn't valuable without Liberty, then Liberty is more valuable than Security is.
We may have a two-pronged (benevolent) verbal skirmish going here, given the similarity between this and the “heuristic neocon” thread.
If it was a matter of either-or, you would be right. But it isn’t. It is an issue of degrees: balancing the cost of lowering our defenses and reducing internal security against the relative loss of liberty, which I consider to be a longer-term issue than the urgency of defeating Islamism. We must survive the immediate danger in order to live and “fight another day” for freedom.
Let’s translate that choice into real consequences: You are implying that you would prefer to see hundreds of thousands of citizens killed by a nuclear bomb blast in a major American city than see universal health care become the law of the land.
I would rather see universal health care signed into law and prosecute the war on terror (internationally and domestically) to prevent such a disaster, with the hope that we will eventually wise up and annihilate the Islamists so that we can turn our attention back to the challenge of preserving freedom at home.
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