Assertions about freedom are unconvincing

There is a price to pay for liberty, writes Joss Miller.

Colin James normally writes with a reasonable degree of moderation but in his latest Commentary,  "Liberty lesson for nation in a bubble" (ODT, 25.7.17) he seems to have been less measured and unnecessarily caustic in some of his comments.

His liberty lesson commences with an expression of concern that members of an audience in the United States  who  will be hearing an address by John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the American Supreme Court, will undergo a security bag check and X-ray prior to entering the venue. This in Mr James’s view is an "indignity" and conveys the notion that attendees are somehow "guilty until proved innocent — as our airports tell us". He views security screens in parliament in the same way.

Most of the checks described have  been commonplace for many years as a consequence of terrorist incidents in a significant number of Western countries.  Checks which might have been disconcerting for members of the public when first instituted are so commonplace now  they are largely accepted as a matter of course. Bearing that in mind, and the high profile the American Supreme Court Chief Justice has, it is of little surprise there would be a significant level of  security on this occasion.

Mr James is concerned and with some justification that police officers are able to conduct breath tests on motorists without any need for suspicion. However, once random stopping was legislated and implemented in the 1980s the earlier "good cause to suspect" provisions in the Transport Act no longer applied,  the rationale being that the curtailment of individual liberty was outweighed by public safety and deterrence factors. 

Interesting, too, that few New Zealanders appeared to have expressed concerns at the time when the random stopping law was introduced.

Most of the remainder of Mr James’s commentary is devoted to denigrating the current American leadership.  Is he aware that when the legality of Obamacare was challenged in The American Supreme Court several years ago, that in a split 5-4 decision,  Justice Roberts supported the majority view upholding the legislation, even though he was regarded as one of the more conservative justices and likely to oppose it.

With one or two exceptions Mr James says that "Republicans are a toxic concoction of small-state ideologues". Such a judgement seems small-minded, indeed, and exposes Mr James’ own prejudice and lack of objectivity. His assertions that liberty and freedom are somehow in decline or threatened in America is unconvincing. As a nation, it certainly has its challenges, as do we. But it still remains the West’s best hope.

It is correct that New Zealand is a relatively benign country, far from the trouble spots of the world. We still need an appropriate level of security, though, and sometimes this does and will entail curtailment of individual liberty. Hopefully, that is a small price to pay in the larger scheme of things. And, yes, some times it might involve an X-ray screening!

- Joss Miller lives in Dunedin.