A Slow but Steady Change of Mind

[Updates below.]

Jim Henley says this:

This ["And here I thought the salient threat to liberty in America today was, y'know, terrorism."] is a basic and important error. No, the salient threat to your liberty is not terrorism. Terrorism is a threat to our lives, not our liberties. Osama bin Laden and his ilk can not take away a single freedom - we can only do that ourselves. Say you believe that al Qaeda really does want to impose the Caliphate on the United States. Well, they can't. A free and mighty people simply can't be imposed on that way. Simply decide you would rather die free than live enslaved and no ragamuffin "army" of religious malcontents can dictate our political and cultural destiny.

It occurs to me that this is yet another problem with accepting the idea of a tradeoff between liberty and security. Every time Bush and Ashcroft evoke fear to justify new domestic security legislation, every time Bush and Rumsfeld conjure some new bogyman from a two-bit thug with a palace, they weaken the country's anti-tyranny immune system by insinuating that life is more important than liberty. Get people to believe that hard enough and you have established the preconditions for the Caliphate, the Soviet or the Bund.

He's responding to Sean Collins.

For a long time, I equated terrorism with loss of liberty and therefore something to be actively fought. If pressed on my stance, I'd argue that getting killed is the ultimate loss of liberty. But Mr. Henley's statements have driven me to re-evaluate my position.

Combined with Arthur Silber's long foreign policy essay (which I am still reading), I think I may be experiencing a change of mind towards Bush's foreign policy and it's implementation, long the one thing besides a few narrow things that I could point to and support in an otherwise bad administration. I'm already sick of the shit he's supervised on his watch (lest I forget, he also signed McCain-Feingold) as well as his fiscal ineptitude in regards to his alleged smaller government principles. Then there are his social policies on marijuana and religion.

I can no longer vote for him in good conscience in 2004. The question now is how quickly I'll accelerate away from his platform and towards another's.

UPDATE(11/25/2003 11:07pm)
Add Chinese textile quotas and tariffs on Chinese TVs to the ever-growing list of economic reasons why I won't vote for George Bush. Absolutely pathetic.

UPDATE(11/30/2003 11:15pm)
Looks like Bush will be dropping the steel tariffs sometime this week. Good move, but too bad it had to be made at all.

The Bush administration has decided to repeal its 20-month-old tariffs on imported steel to head off a trade war that would have included foreign retaliation against products from politically crucial states, administration and industry sources said yesterday.

The officials would not say when President Bush will announce the decision but said it is likely to be this week. The officials said they had to allow for the possibility that he would make some change in the plan, but a source close to the White House said it was "all but set in stone."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

UPDATE(12/4/2003 1:20pm)
The tariffs have been scrapped.

UPDATE(6/18/2004 5:05pm)
Whom to Vote For?

UPDATE 9/24/2004 5:50pm
The Austin American-Statesman, Voting, Free Speech, and Information

Posted by Drizzten at October 09, 2003 01:33 AM