Content provided in partnership with

Liberty security: how much should be sacrificed? Winning essays from The Economist/Shell competition

Whole Earth, Winter, 2002

<< Page 1 Continued from page 1. Previous | Next

For two decades and counting, we citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave have happily traded freedom for every scrap of bogus safety dangled before us. Indeed, we have devoted prodigious energy to inventing threats that demand the sacrifice of liberty, privacy, and even basic human dignity.

It hardly takes an international cabal of murderous fanatics to frighten us into making the trade. This is a country in which millions of working people submit routinely to random inspections of their own urine. Why? So that someone, somewhere, can feel falsely assured that no insurance claim is processed and no forklift in the nation is driven down a warehouse aisle by a weekend marijuana smoker. The act of contributing the sample must be observed by monitors to prevent the wondrous crime of urine fraud--a transgression unimaginable before the 1980s, when we obliged Ronald and Nancy Reagan by opening our bladders to public scrutiny in the name of workplace safety.

Most Popular Articles in Health: Fuel your workout: exercisers who eat before they work out have more energy ...; Soothe a dry, itchy scalp: 5 easy expert solutions; Cocktails and calories: Beer, wine and liquor calories can really add up. ...; The sour truth about apple cider vinegar - evaluation of therapeutic use; The, six best supplements you've never heard of: these secret weapons can ...; More »

From the other end of the political spectrum come the pusillanimous speech codes on our college campuses. These restrict permissible discussion so that tomorrow's thought leaders may feel safe. Safe from what? From chance encounters with thoughts that might disturb their equanimity.

We know perfectly well--television tells us so--that half of humanity lives in appalling poverty and that common pastimes on three continents include fleeing marauding bandit-armies and wondering where one's next meal will come from. Yet here in America, the threat du jour--our own pet idea of a deadly menace to our health and welfare--is secondhand smoke. We're not only able but eager to take this seriously, ordinances and all. In the entire state of California there is no saloon with a clientele so reckless and depraved that the law will avert its eyes and permit them to take the insane risk of drinking a beer in a building occupied by a person who might smoke a cigarette.

Contemporary vacationers will be scandalized to learn that in Frank Sinatra's heyday, diving boards were standard equipment at the swimming pools of the glittering hotels on the Las Vegas Strip. Even three-meter high boards! The curse was lifted, thanks to a well-grounded fear of personal-injury lawyers, and the Strip today is proudly board-free. After all, someone might get hurt. Against that prospect, who would argue for the freedom to attempt a back flip in the gambling capital of the world?

We'd sacrifice the right to choose what foods to put in our mouths if only the dietitians would settle long enough on which ones are the safest for the' bills to be pushed through our state legislatures. Sugar or saccharin? Margarine or butter? Wine or abstinence? Meat or no? There are germs on our kitchen counters that appear under ultraviolet light! Something we're ingesting is bound to prevent us from dragging out our worried lives for a full ninety years. Please, God, won't the food scientists tell us once and for all what it is?

Small wonder if Osama bin Laden expected the entire American edifice to collapse along with the New York towers the moment he showed us something genuinely scary. We gave him every reason to believe it would.

Health Care Industry

Liberty security: how much should be sacrificed? Winning essays from The Economist/Shell competition

Whole Earth, Winter, 2002

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Reference

Most Popular Articles in Health

Most Popular Publications in Health