Don’t Stand so Close to Me

(Hat Tip, LittleGreenFootballs)

DailyKOS member duvallbuck says he’d rather die in a terrorist attack than, “allow the domestic surveillance of any citizen’s email, phone calls, medical records, library usage or financial transactions,” among other things.

To add an air of legitimacy to this opinion, he quotes Patrick Henry, who said, at the end of one of the most famous battlecries in the History of America, “Give me Liberty or Give me Death!”

I do not share duvallbuck’s desire to become a human sacrifice on the altar of islamofascism in this war on terror.

I wonder if duvallbuck, or any of the numerous commenters on his KOS diary, which support his desire to be killed in a terrorist attack, have taken time to read the rest of that speech Patrick Henry made to rally his fellow Virginians to join the Revolutionary War, including this line:

Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?

Or how about this paragraph of the speech which includes this famous statement by Henry:

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, “Peace! Peace!” — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Duvallbuck and his KOS friends have taken this quote by Patrick Henry out of context. Henry was not encouraging Virginians to offer themselves up to the enemy as human sacrifices. He was encouraging them to go fight. Liberty, not death, was the main goal of the American Revolution.

We are fighting a different type of war today than our Founders were preparing for in 1775, but just like then, in 2007, “The war is actually begun!” We, as Americans, need to wake up and realize that if we don’t fight the terrorists, they will win. We need to use the intelligence and technology that is available to us today, in 2007, that was not available in the 18th century.

Abraham Lincoln, when habeus corpus was legally suspended during the Civil War, gave written permission, “to arrest, and detain, without resort to ordinary processes and forms of law, such individuals as he might deem dangerous to public safety.”

As Justice Robert H. Jackson said in 1949, we need to be careful not to “convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

(also at JennSierra.com)

Also, see Give Me Liberty