It seems a long time but has only been a few weeks since Veterans' Day, when we pause to honor those who served in the US military. Then, as on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and the other solemn punctuations we place in our lives right up to and including funerals of all those vets, we honor the men and women who "Fought for Our Freedoms." This alliterative bit hits home, to the notice of cynical politicians and the mongering profiteers who run them, and it is so well used that it flows instantly and automatically with the narrative that becomes history.
Many soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines did fight for freedom against such worthy foes as European fascism. Even more spent tours of unmitigated boredom in varying degrees of discomfort. Some got hurt, lost limbs, and died. For Freedom, we say, because it's just too painful to abide otherwise.
The Leaders who send these kids to war have a pretty sorry record of using the military force at their disposal for actually protecting freedom. From the US, sham states in certain neighborhoods of Iraq and Afghanistan may look better than their immediate predecessors, but its debatable whether normal people fare any better there. Meanwhile, here at home, we citizens were stripped of a litany of freedoms during these conflicts and the overall War on Terror. Stopping a Libyan madman or Balkan genocide is good, but honest fights for freedom are rare these days. It turns out that Fighting for Freedom is not such an important policy objective that we do it in places without oil.
I would like to have people in uniform fight for freedom right here at home.
Not warfighting, and I'm not even suggesting we replace military with Americorps (not in this post, anyway). I mean the police and if need be the national guard protecting freedom. The freedoms to assemble, to petition our government, and to speak our minds, for example. I mean protecting the right of citizens to speak out, not just protecting the buildings and the politicians.
Maybe I should explain that what got me to thinking along these lines was the news that Wisconsin's bitterly partisan governor chose to wind down a year in which his citizens rose up against him by issuing a policy stating that more that four people in the capitol building or 100 people outside constitutes a demonstration which must get a permit. Oh, and to get a permit, a political appointee of said governor may decide to demand--up front--payment for estimated police pay and capitol clean-up, liability insurance, and a bond. Pay up, or no permit. No entry onto the grounds of your state's capitol, where democracy used to live.
To my mind, government should accept the cost of some extra trash cans and police labor as the cost of democracy. We have trillions for wars with Iraq, but not to ensure a safe place for people to exercise their democratic freedoms? Preposterous, our freedom lives here with us. The governor had $140,000,000 in tax breaks and give-aways to corporations, but balks at spending a small percentage of that to maintain the seat of government and protect the rights of citizens? Utter nonsense.
Governor Walker says the demonstrations (triggered by his arrogant stances against workers' freedom of assembly and petition) cost $8,000,000 in police and nearly that much again to clean up tape marks on the marble halls of power, a claim so dubious that even he backed away from it. He feels that it is fair to turn this into a sort of user-fee situation. Not a tax, of course. Not intended to make it hard for the un-wealthy to protest. Not intended to stifle free speech, to make the solons of the Badger State unreachable. Not thumbing his patrician nose at the teeming masses by making them pay for police who may be used to intimidate them. No. Not that at all.
Say each and every state capitol had Wisconsin-sized demonstrations every year, really saw an increase of $10,000,000 a year to cover the costs of democracy. That would be half a billion dollars nationwide. How many times over have we dropped that kind of cash to Fight for Freedom overseas? We did it a few times every week under Bush. We have in our arsenal single weapons that cost more than that. I propose that the federal government sell one of those and issue block grants to states to be used to protect our freedom.
We may not agree with our fellow citizens. We may despise what they say. We may want to go out and say our piece, hold up our signs and shout slogans at each other. But we should not want them silenced. We should not support financial obstacles to showing up where the laws are made to speak to our Leaders. We should not support the perverse use of police to squelch protest, rather than to shepherd it.
I've seen the state troopers who guard the capitol here in Olympia maintain their cool, help keep the Occupy camp safe, and keep an eye out for actions that could escalate into violence. Entering the capitol building during one rally, I was asked to leave my sign by the door because it had a stick attached, which I guess some people would see as an infringement, but to me makes enough sense to comply. The point is that instead of jumping to eviction and pepper spray, they let democracy happen. I'd be happy knowing that my tax money helped pay for just enough police to keep me from being attacked for my beliefs or to keep rowdies from turning political protest into vandalism and violence. Protect and defend democracy, fight for freedom.
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