Indeed, the encryption of computer data may well be the most powerful tool that peaceful individuals have to protect themselves against Big Brother. Predictably, Big Brother is miffed. In a Dec. 12, 2011, Salon column entitled “Hillary Clinton and Internet Freedom,” civil rights guru Glenn Greenwald commented, “Beyond WikiLeaks, the Obama administration…is seeking ‘a new federal law forcing Internet email, instant messaging and other communication providers offering encryption to build in backdoors for law-enforcement surveillance.’”

The rationale, as expressed in “A Report to the President of the United States” on Sept. 16, 1999, remains the same today: “American history has been punctuated by periods in which the national government had to respond to sweeping social, economic and technological developments.” Speaking of cyberspace as a “new tool,” the government claims that technology raises new issues to which it must respond in new ways.

Buncombe. The core issues are exactly the same as they have always been. Government intrusion and civil liberties. Surveillance and privacy. Social control and freedom.

These issues date back to the founding of America. In 1785, a resolution authorized the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs to open and inspect any mail that related to the safety and interests of the United States. The ensuing “inspections” caused prominent men, like George Washington, to complain of mail tampering. According to various historians, it led James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe to write to each other in code — that is, they encrypted their letters — in order to preserve the privacy of their political discussion.

The need for Founding Fathers to encrypt the information they sent to each other is high irony. The intrusive post office against which they rebelled had been established specifically to provide a free flow of political opinion. In the colonial 1770s, Sam Adams had urged the 13 colonies to create an independent postal system. The existing post office, established by the British, acted as a censor and barrier against the spread of rebellious sentiment. Dorothy Ganfield Fowler, in her book Unmailable: Congress and the Post Office, observed, “He [Adams] claimed the colonial post office was made use of for the purpose of stopping the ‘Channels of publick Intelligence and so in Effect of aiding the measures of Tyranny.’” Thus, “‘the necessity of substituting another office in its Stead must be obvious.’”

Alas, the more government changes, the more tyranny remains the same. Soon, the Continental Congress itself wanted to declare some types of matter “unmailable” because their content was deemed too dangerous. One of the first types of mail to become de facto unmailable was Anti-Federalist letters and periodicals. During the debates over ratifying the Constitution, the Anti-Federalists — who rejected the Constitution unless it had a Bill of Rights — simply could not circulate their material through the Federalist-controlled post office.

Yet like Adams, many of those who founded the Post Office seemed to sincerely want communication to flow freely. The first official restrictions placed on “mailability” were strictly utilitarian, not political. For example, the first law (1797) by which Congress limited what could be mailed banned newspapers with wet print because they damaged accompanying material. But politics won over good intentions. Prior to and during the Civil War, governments of both the North and South banned just about anything they deemed to be “seditious.”

Private communication in America has never recovered. Recent history is rife with purely political postal measures such as the Cunningham Amendment (1962), which restricted the circulation of communist literature that originated in a foreign country.

The American government has always realized the political importance of controlling the flow of information. In the 1770s, communication occurred primarily through postal routes maintained by horseback riders. Today, we communicate through packets of data beamed across phone lines. The type of technology used is a technicality and irrelevant to the principles involved. The key questions are who owns your words and ideas? and who has the right to read them? No wonder government wants to divert attention to the technicality of technology.

The tug of war between privacy and surveillance continues from the colonial days to modern times. For over a decade, the struggle has focused on encryption. On May 6, 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal restrictions on encryption violated the First Amendment: Specifically, they constituted prior restraint and limited the freedom of the press (Daniel J. Bernstein v. U.S. Department of Justice). In that decision, Judge Betty Fletcher stated, “The availability and use of secure encryption may…reclaim some portion of the privacy we have lost. Government efforts to control encryption thus may well implicate not only the First Amendment rights…but also the constitutional rights of each of us as potential recipients of encryption’s bounty.” Then, on Sept. 30, the Clinton government managed to convince the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that the Bernstein case should be reheard. The earlier decision was withdrawn.

Such maneuvers are nothing new. What would Thomas Jefferson have said of them? I suspect he would have said it in code.

Regards,

Wendy McElroy

Thomas Jefferson: Crypto-Rebel? was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

We wonder: do we even remember what it means to be free? If not – and I think not – The Idea of America: What It Was and How It Was Lost (hardcover and Kindle), a collection of bracing reminders from our past, as edited by William Bonner and Pierre Lemieux, is the essential book of our time.

I’ll just mention two outrages that occur first to me. In the last six months, I came back to the country twice from international travel, once by plane and once by car. The car scene shocked me. The lines were ridiculously long and border control agents, clad in dark glasses and boots and wearing enough weaponry to fight an invading army, run up and down the lines with large dogs. Periodically, U.S. border control would throw open doors of cars and vans and let the dogs run through, while the driver sits there poker faced and trying to stay calm and pretending not to object.

When I finally got to the customs window, I was questioned not like a citizen of the country but like a likely terrorist. The agent wanted to know everything about me: home, work, where I had been and why, and whether I will stay somewhere before getting to my destination, family composition, and other matters that just creeped me out. I realized immediately that there was no question he could ask me that I could refuse to answer, and I had to do this politely.

That’s power.

The second time I entered the country was by plane, and there were two full rescans of bags on the way in, in addition to the passport check, and a long round of questioning. There were no running dogs this time; the passengers were the dogs and we were all on the agents’ leashes. Whatever they ordered us to do, we did, no matter how irrational. We moved here and there in locked step and total silence. One step out of line and you are guaranteed to be yelled at. At one point, an armed agent began to talk loudly and with a sense of ridicule about the clothes I was wearing, and went out of his way to make sure everyone else heard him. I could do nothing but smile as if I were being complimented by a friend.

That’s power.

Of course these cases are nothing like the reports you hear almost daily about the abuse and outrages from domestic travel, which now routinely requires everyone to submit to digital strip searches. We have come to expect this. We can hardly escape the presence of the police in our lives. I vaguely remember when I was young that I thought of the police as servants of the people. Now their presence strikes fear in the heart, and they are everywhere, always operating under the presumption that they have total power and you and I have absolutely none.

You hear slogans about the “land of the free” and we still sing patriotic songs at the ballpark and even at church on Sunday, and these songs are always about our blessed liberty, the battles of our ancestors against tyranny, the special love of liberty that animates our heritage and national self identity. The contrast with reality grows more stark by the day.

And it isn’t just about our personal liberty and our freedom to move about with a sense that we are exercising our rights. It hits us in the economic realm, where no goods or services change hands that aren’t subject to the total control of the leviathan state. No business is really safe from being bludgeoned by legislatures, regulators, and the tax police, while objecting only makes you more of a target.

Few dare say it publicly: America has become a police state. All the signs are in place, among which the world’s largest prison population. If we are not a police state, one must ask what are the indicators that will tell us that we’ve crossed the line? What are signs we haven’t yet seen?

We can debate that all day about when, precisely, the descent began but there can be no doubt when the slide into the despotic abyss became precipitous. It was after the terrorists hit on 9/11 in 2001. The terrorists wanted to deliver a blow to freedom. Our national leaders swore the terrorists would never win, and then spent the following ten years delivering relentless and massive blows to liberty as we had known it.

The decline has been fast but not fast enough for people to be as shocked as they should be. Freedom is a state of being that is difficult to recall once it is gone. We adapt to the new reality, the way people adapt to degenerative diseases, grateful for slight respites from pain and completely despairing of ever feeling healthy and well again.

What’s more, all the time we spend obeying, complying, and pretending to be malleable in order to stay out of trouble ends up socializing us and even changing our outlook on life. As in the Orwell novel, we have adjusted to government control as the new normal. The loudspeakers blared that all of this is in the interest of our security and well being. These people who are stripping us, robbing us, humiliating us, impoverishing us are doing it all for our own good. We never fully believe it but the message still affects our outlook.

The editors of The Idea of America are urging a serious national self assessment. They argue that freedom is the only theme that fully and truly animates the traditional American spirit. We are not united in religion, race, and creed, but we do have this wonderful history of rebellion against power in favor of human rights and freedom from tyranny. For this reason the book begins with the essential founding documents, which, if taken seriously, make a case for radical freedom not as something granted by government but as something that we possess as a matter of right.

The love of liberty is rooted in our Colonial past, and it is thrilling to see Murray Rothbard’s excellent account of the pre-revolutionary past printed here, with followups to make the point by Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine. Lord Acton makes the next appearance with a clarifying essay about the whole point of the American Revolution, which was not independence as such but liberty. He forcefully argues that the right of secession, the right to annul laws, the right to say no to the tyrant, the right to leave the system, constitute great contribution of America to political history. As you read, you wonder where these voices are today, and what would happen to them if they spoke up in modern versions of the same thoughts. These revolutionaries are pushing ideas that the modern regime seeks to bury and even criminalize.

The voice of the new country and its voluntaristic themes is provided by Alexis de Tocqueville, along with the writings of James Madison. As Bonner and Lemieux argue in their own contributions, the idea of anarchism, that is, living without a state, has always been just beneath the surface of American ideology. Here they bring it to the surface with an essay by proto-anarchist J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur, who said of America: “we have no princes for whom we toil, starve, and bleed: we are the most perfect society now existing in the world.”

The anarchist strain continues with marvelous writings by Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Volairine de Cleyre, plus some court decisions reinforcing gun rights. The book ends with another reminder that American is an open society that is welcoming to newcomers. The final choice of Rose Wilder Lane’s “Give Me Liberty” is inspired.

The value of this book is dramatically heightened by the additional material from Bonner, whose clear prose and incisive intellect is on display here both in the foreword and the afterword, as well as Lemieux, whose introduction made my blood boil with all his examples of government gone mad in our time. Bonner in particular offers an intriguing possibility that the future of the true America has nothing to do with geography; it is exists where the free minds and free hearts exist. The digitization of the world opens up new opportunities for just this.

The contrast is stark: what America was meant to be and what it has become. It can be painful to take this kind of careful look. Truly honest appraisals of this sort are rare. Adapting, going along, pretending not to notice are all easier strategies to deal with the grim situation we face. But this is not the way America’s founder dealt with their problems. This book might inspire us to think and act more like which should.

We should prepare.

In the words of Thomas Paine:

O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. — Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

 

Regards,

Jeffrey Tucker

What the Heck Happened to America? was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

From it we draw the historic words, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent States…” The resolution was tabled for the day and taken up on June 8.  But because some of the colonies, including Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, had not authorized their delegates to vote for independence (imagine that: politicians who are faithful to their constituents) the congress recessed for three weeks for the men to return home to find their colonies’ will.

Before recessing however, the congress appointed the famous Committee of Five, John Adams (MA), Benjamin Franklin (PA), Thomas Jefferson (VA), Robert Livingston (NY), and Roger Sherman (CT), to produce a document that laid out the case for independence.  The committee tasked Jefferson with the writing of the document, and the bulk of the work was his.  After his initial draft, he presented it to the committee, who made only minor revisions.  Then it was off to the Congress, where the debate really commenced.

The Congress re-convened on June 28, 1776.

It had been a hot spell in Philadelphia.  Jefferson records that on his way to what is now known as Independence Hall, he stopped to look at a thermometer.  Even in the early morning, it was already 80 degrees and rising.  Inside the hall, which was all closed up to avoid the heated debate being heard in the streets outside, some have estimated the temperatures at 100 degrees.  In the humid, bug infested convention, (there was a livery stable next door), the temperature was not the only thing rising.

Jefferson’s own design was to create a document that by its plainness and simplicity would be instructive and convincing, with arguments so plain and straightforward that none could contest them as they set forth the case for independence.  Hoping to create a document that would convince those who read it, not the least of which were many fence-sitting colonists, he listed a long section of the crimes of the King against the colonies, many of which were eventually omitted.  He also had written a substantial portion on the illegitimacy of the slave trade in MEN (capitalization was Jefferson’s).  That too was eventually stricken from the finished edit.

There were those who refused to vote.  There was even an abstention from New York in the final tally.  The young nation was being stressed at every seam in that hot, humid hall.

But on July 2, 1776, the cornerstone of the new nation had been formed.

A day later, July 3, future president John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail the following words.

“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.  It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with pomp, and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illumination, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

His spirit was right, even if his timing was off by a couple days.

What was once memorized by grade school children as a world-shaping piece of literature is now known by very few modern students.

However, it’s final lines bear repeating…

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Of the 56 men who signed the Declaration, some names are still common among us:  Franklin, Jefferson and Hancock.  But the remaining 53 have been largely forgotten.  What kind of men were they?  What did they stand to gain from this Revolution?

They ranged in age from 23 (Edward Rutledge of South Carolina) to age 80 (Ben Franklin of Pennsylvania).  24 of them were lawyers or judges, 11 of them were merchants of various kinds, nine were farmers, and the remaining members were ministers, doctors, and statesmen.

With just a handful of exceptions, these were all men of substantial education, property and public standing.  As compared with the rest of the populace of the 1700′s, they had blessings, eases, and pleasures in life enjoyed by very few.  All of them had more to lose, than they had to gain.

John Hancock, who already had a bounty of 500 pounds on his head, was one of the wealthiest of the signers.  From a family of considerable wealth, he inherited his mercantile fortune from his Uncle, Thomas Hancock.  He was educated at Harvard, and had all that life could give him at the time.  Yet he signed his signature with such size and flourish, that “it might be read without spectacles.”

He was not alone.  The fever of liberty was running at a high pitch.  Yet each of them knew the risks.  Treason was punished by hanging.  And the consequences did not end with themselves, but extended to their families as well.  And there was already a massive English fleet docked in the harbor at New York.

And Hancock’s actions did not go unnoticed by the British.  Nor did the those of the other suspected signers.  All of them became ferociously hunted.  Delegates from New York, William Floyd, Philips Livingston, Louis Morris, and Francis Lewis, each had their homes destroyed.  Mrs. Lewis was captured and brutalized.  Though later exchanged for two British prisoners, she never recovered.  The Floyds were able to flee from New York into Connecticut, where they lived as refugees for the next seven years.  Upon their return, they found nothing left of their estate.  Livingston, whose large possessions were confiscated, died two years later still working in Congress.  Morris was deprived of his family for the next seven years.

Delegate John Hart of New Jersey, attempted to come home to see his dying wife, but was turned back by soldiers.  As she lay dying, soldiers destroyed his livestock and burned his farm.  He was hunted from pillar to post.  When the manhunt finally relented, he returned to find his wife dead and buried.  His 13 children had been taken away.  He died three years later absolutely broken, never seeing his family again.

Judge Richard Stockton rushed home from Philadelphia to evacuate his wife and children.  Betrayed by a sympathizer to the Crown, he was torn from his bed where they were hiding in the middle of the night and subjected to a brutal beating.  He was jailed, starved, and finally released after becoming an invalid.  He did not see the end of the war or its victory, and his family was required to live off of the charitable help of friends and strangers.

The list goes on and on.  One heartbreaking, gutwrenching story after another.  Each of sacred honor, fortunes sacrificed and lives lost or forever altered.  Yet not one recanted.  Not one relented.  Not one failed to deliver on his pledge to the others.

And most remarkably, there was one man…a man who had the chance to see his family spared.  A man who could have saved his two sons if only he had rejected the colonial revolution and supported the King.  He was Abraham Clark of New Jersey.  Clark had two sons who fought for the new nation.  They were eventually captured and taken to the notorious British prison ship Jersey, where more than 11,000 American soldiers died.  The two suffered most severely for the “crimes” of their father, brutally beaten and starved.

Clark was offered his two son’s lives if he would just come out in support of the King.  To those of us who live so soft and comfortably 200 hundred years in their wake, it must seem astounding that with a broken heart, he said, “No”.

Life.  Fortune.  Sacred Honor.

Regards,
Bill Jenkins

July 14, 2009

The High Cost of Independence was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.