Some Kind of Purple

I can remember the counteless times I've heard my mother say “too much of anything is never a good thing.” As I’ve grown older, I’ve found her infamous words to be an everlasting piece of advice. While of course the words usually spilled from my mother’s mouth in reference to the amount of material things I had, or in the amount of freedom she gave me, I find the statement to be true in politics as well. Especially in regards to government control and libertarianism as discussed in “Politics for the Really Cool” by Josh McHugh, I think that too much of either (control versus anarchism) is not a good thing.

Let’s take a direction that's different yet still very similar from McHugh and his discussion about cryptography by looking at the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act is an enactment passed by President Bush following the tragic events of 11 September 2001. Some of the provisions of this decree include increased accessibility of the government into personal records (medical and financial), telephone conversations, and e-mail communications. It also allows for financial transactions to be regulated, and makes foreign intelligence assembly in the U.S more permissible.

Given the Patriot Act and what it stands for, it could not better exemplify the idea that neither too much control nor too little government is optimal. Essentially, the act allows enforcement officials to pry into and invade the lives our country's citizens. It strips away from citizens’ freedoms and provides more power to political practices. The government now has power sufficient enough to monitor how an individual spend their money, copious enough to note what books they're buying, and amplible enough to oversee who they're speaking with. This is our government taking a step in the authoritarian direction.

This control factor is the very thing that calls libertarianism into view. Our country stands for its freedom and the liberty it offers to it citizens, but our independence and individuality can’t be 100 percent if our free will is taken away. While all of this makes the citizens of this country who they are, it’s interesting to wonder where we’d be if the government took a step back. Citizens would unquestionably have increased individual sovereignty. In such case, imagine the validity of the word "freedom" without the government breathing down our neck. On the contrary however, think about probable terrorists like Mohammed Wali Zizi and his affiliates or those alike. Imagine the damage they could have been done on the eight anniversary of 11 September 2001 had the government not had the authority to interfere at the lengths they did.

The Patriot Act strips away individual freedoms, but to get some you’ve got to give some. In exchange for what we’re giving up, we’re receiving a higher form of protection from the government as a whole. Just as the act allows us to foresee, too much government is equally as bad as too much anarchy. At the utmost extreme, if individual or even state sovereignty could not exist in the founding colonies, it’s hard to envision how it could exist amongst 50 states. Likewise, the United States would not stand for what it does if it politically existed with a structure similar to that in North Korea. Even downplayed at a libertarian/authoritative level, there needs to be a “happy medium” (with maybe just a little bit of lean to the left!). Individual sovereignty is important, even desirable. Yet, so is the bold protection of the government. Somewhere, the two need to meet in the middle.