The Ultimate Choice

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“I do not want – and I am sure the vast majority of Americans will agree with me – my family's lives put in jeopardy because some half-wit in government thinks that is what our Constitution requires. Such a person should be instantly fired.”
-- rick0101

That is a quote from a comment on a news story about Guantanamo and torture. It fairly leaped off the page. It is perhaps the clearest statement I’ve read of the quandary that is the American political scene today.

Do we protect our loved ones first and foremost, or do we protect the ideals that make our country great?

Our country was founded on some pretty simple ideas. We sum them up in some pretty simple phrases: All men are created equal. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Habeas Corpus. Freedom of speech, assembly, religion, the press. There are people who claim that the abrogation of any of these tenets will mean the end of civilization as we know it.

That’s until there is any credible threat to them or their families.

Perhaps that old saw that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged and a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested is really true. Tip O’Neill, after all, said that all politics are local. What’s more local than your child’s welfare?

When does the good of everyone trump the good of any one person? I suspect that we all have a different answer. And I also suspect that we won’t really know the answer until we are in a position where we’ll really need it.
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