Barlow in jail
Well, he’s out now, but John Perry Barlow’s account of his arrest for carrying controlled substances in the rights-free zones we call airports is a must-read. Here’s one snippet that happens not to be part of the rollicking and terrifying narrative:
In general, the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security have been extremely unresponsive and have instructed Covenant Security to stonewall us as well. We have asked them whether they knew who I was when they searched my bag and whether my identity had any bearing on the exquisite granularity of their search methods. They’ve refused to answer on grounds of national security. We have asked them for the training manuals and search guidelines under which Covenant Security was operating. No dice. We asked whether their x-ray machines were tuned to identify drugs as well as explosives, a technical capacity some of these units possess. Sorry. That would be SSI (or Sensitive Security Information.) We have inquired whether Covenant Security had any incentive program which rewarded its employees for discovering evidence of illegal activity. Again, preserving the safety of all Americans prohibits a response. At one point, they were even insisting that it would be threat to national security if the Covenant Security employee who allegedly discovered the purported contraband were called upon to testify, thereby abrogating my constitutional right to confront my accuser, but they seem to have relented on this point.
JP is fighting this one. Here, in a roundabout way, is why I think it important that he win.
Last night, I wasd talking with a friend I love who said that he had been talking with Michael Turk, head of the Bush e-campaign. (Here and here on Turk.) My friend said that Turk said that the Bush blog had no commenting because they were afraid people would say things that would alienate Bush’s fundamentalist supporters. My friend said, “I was impressed. I’d thought that they’d shut off comments because they were into command and control. But they had good, political reasons for doing so.”
Of course they did. That’s how command and control structures get put in place. Generally, someone doesn’t say, “I favor control, so no comments!” Instead, there’s a direct reason that can be debated by reasonable people, but behind it is the impulse to control, and ahead of it is a system that’s locked down as tight as the bolts that stick your car seat to the frame.
In the same way, totalitarianism generally doesn’t happen because people say, “Gosh, isn’t totalitarianism great?” It happens through a series of steps that can be debated on their own grounds. The routine violation of privacy to prevent terrorism is one of those steps. Behind it is the idea that the dangers of the age justify the abrogation of each and every right of citizens. Ahead of it is a nation that values fear over freedom.
Fear the small steps.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
On the other hand, does not having comments really mean “command and control”? There’s a much better argument for blogs by political figures not to have comments. Keeping up with comments can take a lot of work on the part of a highly commented blogger, yet not keeping up with comments is a sign of disrespect for one’s commenters. How to cut that knot? Turn off the comments.
It’s a scaling issue, and I think at least national and major statewide candidates who want to blog will be wise to limit commenting, and possibly just to turn it off.
Dave-
You’ve convinced me.
Micah
“Keeping up with comments can take a lot of work on the part of a highly commented blogger, yet not keeping up with comments is a sign of disrespect for one’s commenters. How to cut that knot? Turn off the comments.”
There is a third option – enable comments for temporary periods of time on posts you intend to respond to in the short term. That way your bandwidth doesn’t get eaten up too fast and you keep folks from hijacking threads with spam.
“…not keeping up with comments is a sign of disrespect for one’s commenters.” Isn’t that a rather fine point of punctiliousness that not many of us are even conscious of? Some of the blogs I frequent have authors that respond to comments and some don’t, and my observation is that commenters are at least as much in conversation with other commenters as they are with the blogger.
My own assumption is, that the author has given us their point of view already, and needn’t belabor it further; my interest is, other readers’ opinions. But then I’m an inveterate reader of letters to the editor.
Authoritarianism or worse is typically welcomed by a lot of people. Those old enough will remember any number of reports from Franco’s Spain, Peron’s Argentina, or Tito’s Yugoslavia, none of them societies in which people expected to be called to account for occasional criticism, in which citizens typically praised their government for avoiding the sort of fuss and bother that disorderly places like the United States had to undergo, with their chaotic systems that might allow almost anyone in government.
Compare the relief expressed by many Russians, after Putin’s crackdown. The adults are in charge now.
FWIW, my position on responding to comments is pretty much the one johne lays out. I don’t have rules that determine when I jump in. It depends. But I always read them eagerly.
“Fear the small steps.”
And the big ones that permit the small ones. The Bush notion of “terrorism” is a political phantasm flexible enough to justify within itself nearly any action or policy. E.g., questioning the absence of rigor in the sovereign’s definition of terrorism could be construed as presenting a national security issue.
It does make sense not to allow comments on a blog, but when you also create ‘free speech’ zones which are in fact just the opposite, then refusing comments on a blog is a choice consistant with a standpoint against free speech, even if you have a good excuse.