Britain's Home Secretary on the Fungibility of Liberty

I am writing this entry from my seat on a commercial airliner after being repeatedly interrogated prior to boarding about whether or not I had in my possession any liquids including bottled water or hair gel. Don't I feel safe now.

With the security threat level raised today as a result of the attempted hijackings, Britain's Home Secretary, John Reid weighed in on the issue of limiting liberty in order to preserve security.

"Sometimes we may have to modify some of our own freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their misuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy all of our freedoms."

I'm unsure how others might read this little clip, but I am certainly puzzled as to how liberty is best protected when it is curtailed. The unfortunate reality is that in spite of many short term measures to "protect" the people of countries targeted by terrorism, what we have is, at best, an illusion of security interspersed by an infrequent piercing of that dubious veil.

President Bush has said that we mustn't let the terrorists win be reducing our protection of liberty and essentially "give in." Yet this is precisely what his administration and Tony Blair's government have done in response to the recent increase in Islamic terror threats. These threats, lest we forget, have been around since the end of the First World War, and have manifested themselves in a number of ways over the last several decades. Islamic terrorism is nothing new, and our response ought not belie this reality.

We cannot be completely secure, and we must decide what level of safety we are willing to accept with its corresponding loss of freedom.

I would take the opposite stance of Mr. Reid. It would be better to sacrifice some short term security in order to preserve our long-term, fundamental liberties--for they will depart us, not with agony, not with sorrow, and not with fanfare, but in the silence of the night and nothing to be done about it.