Jeff Wartman

Much has been made about the recent back and forth between President Obama and former Vice President Cheney on national security issues.  Today, they “squared off”, with Obama giving a speech to the National Archives Museum, while Cheney gave a subsequent direct response to the American Enterprise Institute.

Over at Hit & Run, Katherine Mangu-Ward has this to say:

On CNN right now, former Vice President Dick Cheney is giving a response to Obama’s speech. As soon as Obama was done the picture switched seamlessly and instantly to Cheney, offering an uncensored, dissenting view from the official pronouncements of the most powerful man in the country. Cheney is speaking from the American Enterprise Institute, an institution that exists entirely free of government pressure, despite a tendency to muck around in partisan politics and policy. The speech is being transmitted on a private, for-profit television channel, broadcast on pay TV, also operating free of government interference.

This is free speech. This is a free society. These institutions—think tanks, news television—operate without fear of reprisal. It’s easy to forget that a rich, multifaceted civil society is a tremendous luxury—and a rarity. Even in other developed nations, television stations are often owned by the state and/or subject to far more political restraint and government censorship.

No matter which side you come down on, it shows the health of our society and the liberties and freedoms we possess just by being able to have this debate.

I am reminded of one of my favorite stories, from Nathan Sharanksy. 

When I read his book The Case for Democracy, he told one of the most moving stories I’ve ever read.  I’m going to paraphrase from memory.

As a boy growing up the Soviet Union, his exposure to political writing was limited to periodicals approved by the government.  The government only allowed communist literature into libraries.  One day, while he and his friends were browsing through the periodicals, they came across a communist magazine from England.  Because of the magazine promoting communism, the government allowed it into circulation.  However, Sharanky knew from his schooling that England was not a communist country.  He immediately realized that if a communist magazine was allowed in England but they were not a communist country, the government allowed dissent to be published and distributed.  The government of England allowed individuals to publish thoughts which criticized the government.  Coming to that realization is how Sharansky first understood the concept of freedom.

So, no matter how hard the communists in the Soviet Union tried to squash dissent, people were still able to realize what it meant to be free.  In the United States, we live in a country where do you not need to use abstract thinking to realize freedom.  Republicans and Democrats have different solutions, but we are both fighting to preserve freedom.