On Feb. 19, 1942, was a sad day for constitutional rights, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas of the country as military zones. These zones were used to incarcerate Japanese Americans in internment camps.
“Is repealing the Affordable Care Act an issue of manhood?” asks Alan Rappeport in the New York Times. He’s referring to the “macho language” in a resolution introduced recently in Jefferson City, Missouri, by State Rep. Mike Moon.
Moon’s House Resolution 99 decimates the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in a dozen whereas clauses, noting the legislation was
HR 99 resolves that, “the members of the Missouri House of Representatives, Ninety-eighth General Assembly, hereby insist that each member of the Missouri Congressional delegation endeavor with ‘manly firmness’ and resolve to totally and completely repeal the Affordable Care Act, settling for no less than a full repeal.”
Among today’s sophisticates, the phrase “manly firmness” elicits giggles, of course. Seasoned Democrats like U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill play the “war on women” card. She complained that those words come from “a point in time when women were chattels and didn’t have the right to vote. I think we can update our vocabulary.”
Lost on — or purposely ignored by — the senator? The fact that the phrase “manly firmness” comes from the Declaration of Independence, from the fifth listed grievance against King George III.
And firmness is exactly what’s needed: adult, strong, serious standing up as our representatives — rather than representing themselves — and defending our individual freedom and its corollary, constitutionally-limited government.
That’s what was needed back in 1776. It is every bit as desperately needed today.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
A brother-and-sister team of anti-Nazi activists were arrested on this date in 1943:
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Read their pamphlets at our Library on This Is Common Sense.
On Feb. 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl, a brother and sister, were arrested at the University of Munich for secretly (or not so secretly) putting out leaflets calling on Germans to revolt against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. In the previous year Hans had founded a group of students, who called themselves “The White Rose.” The group wrote and distributed six leaflets aimed at educated Germans. The leaflets made their way across Germany and to several other occupied countries. The Allies later dropped them all over the Third Reich.
I mean not to boast; I would not excite envy, but manly emulation. We have all one common cause; let it, therefore, be our only contest, who shall most contribute to the security of the liberties of America.
President Obama wants a conversation about encryption. “I lean probably further in the direction of strong encryption” than do some in law enforcement, he says; but he knows the “pressure they’re under to keep us safe.”
We had a “conversation” about our right to robustly encrypt our stuff in the 1990s, after Philip Zimmermann (pictured) created Pretty Good Privacy software to easily render data invulnerable to intruders, including officials eager to bypass any encryption at will. The government threatened to prosecute Zimmerman on bogus charges, but eventually dropped the matter. PGP proceeded apace.
CNET writer Declan McCullagh said it all in a recent tweet: “Obama wants ‘public conversation’ about encryption? Sure: It’s here, we’re not inserting backdoors, get used to it.”
Twitter-user “vruz” adds: “Remember when we had to have a responsible dialogue on the NSA’s mass criminality? When Obama says ‘conversation,’ he means dilution of discourse to co-opt it and make it meaningless.” #ouch.
Contrary to the president’s implication, privacy and safety reinforce each other. Ability to protect our privacy makes us safer from those who would use our passwords, Social Security numbers, and home addresses against us.
Yes, terrorists can use encryption to hide nefarious plans — just as they can use curtains that way. And basements. And cones of silence. Many things deployable for benign purposes can also abet vicious ones. But does this mean that everything innocent people have and do should be easily accessible to government officials — or savvy cyber-criminals?
Or terrorists?
No.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.