Where Freedom Lies

The Blog | Geoffrey R. Stone: Freedom and Responsibility | The Huffington Post: ". . .Throughout our history, Americans have silently approved serious, sometimes grievous abuses of civil liberties, only later to bemoan their failure to act responsibly. During the Cold War, the public failed to challenge the witch-hunts of Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities; during World War II, most Americans sanctioned the mass internment of Japanese-Americans; during the post-World War I Red Scare, the public cheered on the deportation of thousands of innocent aliens; and during World War I, most Americans approved the criminal prosecution of thousands of individuals for criticizing the war or the draft. After every one of these episodes, the public came to acknowledge its error and promised not to repeat the mistake again.

It is quite natural, of course, for us to want to defer to presidential assertions of authority in times of danger. We want to be safe, and presidents promise to protect us. But as citizens of a self-governing society, we bear the responsibility to think seriously about our freedoms. It is our responsibility to learn from the blunders of the past. If we are careless about our freedoms, we risk losing them not only for ourselves, but for our children. As the great judge Learned Hand once warned, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."