After the attack on Pear Harbor,
we took counsel of our fears. Suddenly we suspected anyone of Japanese descent.
We just knew that they were up to something nefarious. Letting our suspicions
get the better of us, we ended up incarcerating almost two-hundred thousand of
innocent Asian-Americans and other perfectly legal residents. All this due to
their skin color and last name. There was no evidence. There was no smoking
gun. There was no subversive plot. We just rounded up totally innocent people,
families, young, and old. Then we shipped them off to camps out in the high
desert where almost two-thousand of them died. This remains a blot on our
nation’s history; a stain resulting from letting our fear overwhelm our
commitment to our founding ideals. Sadly, we seem to be letting our fears get
the better of us again.
Recently, Florida passed a law
which prohibits Chinese individuals from purchasing land in the state,
especially near military installations, airports, and refineries. Though this
law is aimed at non-citizens, increasingly U.S. citizens of Chinese heritage
find themselves unable to purchase homes due to confusion and fear. And Florida
is not alone in this issue. Currently, there are over twenty similar bills in
various state houses and within the halls of Congress. When we embrace politics
and policy driven by fear mongering, we trample on the very things we accuse the
Chinese government of doing, becoming like the very thing we rail against.
In the Florida example, we forget
one of the foundational concepts of our legal system: a person is presumed
innocent until proven guilty. This is but one example of the deleterious
effects of developing public policy based on fearmongering. Such policy may
serve to salve our fears, but it rarely produces good results. More frequently,
it pushes us further down the road towards a more authoritarian and oppressive
state. Politicians, ever hungry for a stronger base, tap into these fears,
leveraging them to strengthen their image as defenders of whatever is important
to their constituency. One politician recently proposed a bill to outlaw
importing Chinese garlic due to their possibly using human waste as a
fertilizer, a practice increasingly found in the United States and Europe. Yet,
one of our Senators is consuming valuable congressional time and energy on this
spurious issue.
When we accept a fear driven governmental
agenda, we end up chasing shadows and failing to address the very real and
pernicious problems our nation faces. Solving real problems is roll-up-your-sleeves
hard work. A large multifaceted nation such as ours requires innovative and complex
solutions. What works in one geographic area may not work in another. Solutions
that I find acceptable may be anathema to others. Yet, we must work together on
issues such as racism, education, healthcare, defense, energy, poverty, and
justice…just to name a few. Perhaps the true alure of fear-based legislation is
that it requires much less in the way of work.
Developing legislation that addresses
the challenges that we face will be quite difficult. Not only would it be hard
to craft, but it also requires compromise, a term increasingly despised in our
national political environment. As an electorate, we must demand better from
our elected representatives. We must no longer accept fear-based-platitudes. If
we accept such meaningless posturing instead of the hard work of true
legislation, we will not enjoy progress on the weightier issues before us, and much
worse, we will see an erosion of those ideals which make our nation worthwhile,
perhaps even great. All of this because we take counsel of our fears.
We must remember FDR’s words, “We
have nothing to fear but fear itself.” When we let fear guide us, shape our
political discourse, and frame our legislation, we are much more likely to embrace
policies that savagely curtail the rights of individuals. Such dubious legislation
ultimately exerts a corrosive effect on the traits and ideals which make our
nation a good place in which to live. Additionally, we will not thrive, and our
progeny will not enjoy the full privileges and benefits of living in an open
and free society. That will be our legacy based on the politics of fear.
No comments:
Post a Comment