Writing 2 Section 14 and 15 Spring 2009 Tim Fitzmaurice
ESSAY 1: On Security and Liberty Due Monday April 13th.

Write an essay about the problem of freedom and security after 9-11. In an era of terrorism and the limiting of civil freedoms, an era of surveillance, suicide bombings, torture and war, can we have security without sacrificing freedoms, like privacy rights and freedom of expression? What do we need to understand about this?
John Stuart Mill says in our reader that self-government “is not government of each by himself (sic), but of each by all the rest” (199). Mill says

…the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. (204)

In other words, individual freedom of action can only and should be limited if it is a threat to others. The rest of his essay is committed to asserting individual freedom, but this part asserts the necessity of limits. People can’t be permitted to hurt others. In fact, he later says that we are answerable for doing evil “not only by our actions but by our inactions” (206). So we must be not actively hurt anyone and not passively allow people to be hurt. He binds individual freedom and the safety of all very closely together.
Do we need armies, police, laws? To respond to terrorist threat can we limit people’s freedoms? Can we invade their privacy? Surveillance, torture, profiling, strip-searches, militarism, border control? Should we reduce freedom of action for safety?
Matthew Brzezinski asks in his essay how much should our security cost us: “How Far Should We Go?” (224) It has led to surveillance, torture, a denial of habeas corpus, a lack of judicial oversight on search warrants. Can we tolerate this loss of civil protection? And he says the cost will be even higher in the future

… domestic security will dwarf every other kind federal spending: education, roads, subsidized housing, environmental protection. More than that decisions we make about how to protect ourselves—the measures we demand, the ones we resist—will take over our political discourse and define our ideas about government in years to come. (239)

In effect, for Brzezinski, our way of thinking about democracy is and will be shaped by our history. What about the effects of people coming across the border? In Silko’s essay, the fear of intruders has changed the way we look at migrant workers and every dark skinned person. Security is racialized. She says, “’Immigration,’ like ‘street crime’ and ’welfare fraud,’ is a political euphemism that refers to people of color” (245). So our response to terror is a complex problem. We need to understand it. That is your assignment to tell me how we as a community should understand this problem and respond to it. Use the essays in Chapter 5. The chapter ends, incidentally, with Mona Charen, a conservative voice, saying “if we err on the side of civil liberties instead of security, hundred of thousands or millions of Americans could die” (251).


Hints about writing this essay.
What do you think and how do you support your argument, with these texts, with your observations, with logical argument? I want to suggest that at heart the question is simple. It is almost inevitably a kind of balancing act. The challenge in this assignment is to strike your balance and to put the arguments in order. So what is the structure of an essay like this? Bring a draft of your thesis and some supporting ideas & quotes on April 10th.

Opening: What example makes your argument significant and focuses on your eventual point. It could be a personal account of 9-11. It could be a paraphrase from the essay or an observation of someone else responding to an incident in the war on terror, a soldier, a bombing victim, someone whose rights were infringed because of the new emphasis on controlling people, searching or border protection or airport surveillance or interrogation. The essay starts with a strategy introducing the fundamental focus and topic.

Thesis: Then you need a thesis or purposeful way of asserting your controlling idea. This section is notable for breaking out of the opening narrative or statistics or cases or whatever strategy to become theoretical and analytical and large in scope—what does everyone need to know to understand or to do about this situation? A straightforward thesis could say something like -- We as a society need to understand this phenomenon and take certain actions.

Body: The next challenge is the way you might develop or support your argument. It depends on what strategies you think you need to use to persuade people or to explain the phenomenon. Define it. Quote the texts to tell me what the problem is and how some people see it.
I need to see where the issue is. In this instance, you can show this by looking at different points of view in the essays Charen’s perspective: Get real! We need safety first. Who cares about the “inconvenience” of surveillance or tough border controls? Or Emma Goldman’s notion that “War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battles; therefore they take boys from one village ... and let them loose like wild beasts against each other” (216). Or Silko’s notion that our homeland security rules are not just inconvenient, but are bound up with racism and a “police state” (244).
Remember that this where you assert what you need to say about the matter. It depends on how you read these people and other essays in our book. DO NOT USE ANY WEB SOURCES. But feel free to go to any other essay in our textbook. I like the essays on law and obedience and civil disobedience in Chapter 6. I welcome references to the essays in Chapters 1 and 11.
The essay needs to speak about those who disagree with you. Find the opposing views, quote fairly, analyze them, and respond to their arguments if possible.

Ending: Essays end with a sense of the lesson to be learned from the argument. If we agree about this then we can move forward in a positive direction. If we do not understand this properly we are going to hell in a hand basket—whatever that is. And you can close the circle by returning to your opening example or strategy in some way.