Security no substitute for liberty

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

By Gary Trauner

As I write this column, I am frantically preparing to head overseas for a two-week family trip. In between packing, searching for the voltage converter (probably gathering dust somewhere in my 13-year-old’s room along with everything else he has hidden away), and trying to figure out what clothing will keep me cool in the Middle East, I’ve been doing some thinking.

I guess this thought process began with a Russian guest who stayed with us a couple of weeks ago (and who I wrote about in my last column, June 20) and continued when my family dined with a Ukrainian women’s group who were here in America to learn more about women in politics. And it has been developing more and more as I prepare to head to a troubled part of the world.

Our Ukranian friends were incredibly interested in our political system and the freedoms we have as Americans – they soaked up everything they could hear from anyone who would give them insight. As we sat outside and conversed after dinner on a beautiful Wyoming evening, several quotes ran through my mind. The quotes especially resonated because my Middle Eastern and Eastern European friends clearly hungered for a political system like ours, where freedom of speech and religion are held paramount and we historically respect the rule of law.

Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” America came to be because of the actions of a small group of patriots.  While I obviously wasn’t there, I’ll guess that Ben Franklin and Sam Adams, among others, sat down in a tavern somewhere in the late 1700s and decided it was time for a change.

That is why it is so critical for every American to be involved in their family, community and governing system.  Even if that just means exercising the right to vote – a right that our foreign friends never held until very recently, and one that is still extremely tenuous for them.

These famous words by Margaret Mead helped inspire me to run for office. I am also reminded of a life lesson a tennis coach taught me at a young age. I had hit the ball into the net and his words after that shot have never left me. He said, “Gary, I can guarantee you one thing – if you hit the ball into the net, there is a 100 percent chance you will lose the point. Guaranteed.

If you hit it over, who knows what might happen?” When people were trying to dissuade me from running for office last year – and there were many – my coach’s words came back to me. I knew if I didn’t run, there was a 100 percent chance I wouldn’t win and have the opportunity to make change in D.C. Guaranteed. If I ran, who could predict what might happen?

Another quote I have been pondering is from a famed French historian, an unabashed fan of the U.S. and its democratic system who said: “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America ceases to be great.”  The last several weeks, I have found myself trying to explain to foreigners who covet their newfound freedom the events that have led us here in America to begin restricting those very freedoms in the name of, you got it, freedom.

They ask about torture and Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, secret wiretaps and secret CIA prisons. I am hard pressed to come up with an answer that makes me comfortable. Because while our national security is obviously paramount, it seems to me that the shining light that has historically emanated from our shores around the world is the light of freedom and the rule of law.

Our founding fathers put in place our constitutional freedoms specifically so that we would be different from the world they left behind. And if we diminish those freedoms in pursuit of safety at all costs, then we are left with the immortal words of Benjamin Franklin himself, who said (there are different versions of this quote, but the substance is all the same), “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
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