RE: [-empyre-] Sedition, terror, privacy and the impossible control goal

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

> ...we might ask a politically realist question:
>
> In terms of national security, what are nations to do, otherwise?
>
> This is a question we need to ask ourselves...how much of a
> martial strategy
> is a nation of peoples ethically entitled to in order to prosper
> and ensure
> its survival?  Total?  None? Something between?
>
> It's a very real question that needs to answered by everyone that dares to
> think of such real global problematics, no?
>
> NRIII

A good question. Consider the situation in Britain where, prior to the
London bombings, radical Muslims spoke in the streets and mosques, on
occassion, in inflammatory ways. Seeing footage of this, usually there was a
cop not far off, listening.

Would the London bombings not have happened if radical clerics, and others,
had not been free to speak publicly their seditious points of view?

We can't know for sure, of course, but I am inclined to think that it is
better to hear what people are saying, know what they are saying, let them
say what they will, publicly, than have a situation where total secrecy
prevails. Planning and recruiting can occur in secrecy. It helps the cause,
a little bit, even, since states that silence dissent are easily perceived
as unduly oppressive.

You could say freedom of speech is the cost the state pays for having a clue
about what is really going on and maintaining an open society that is not
perceived as too quick to silence dissent.

If the state desires to be just, to be the good guys, there's a price to be
payed. The alternative is for the state to slip into an insupportable moral
condition in which the citizens themselves come to wonder, justifiably,
about the moral value of the state.

ja
http://vispo.com