Too much freedom is bad

Brian Doherty posts on the Reason Hit & Run blog that the US troops in Iraq are barred from Russ Kick’s Memory Hole site.

Check out the first response by Kevin Carson:

Only makes sense. After all, they’re over there “fighting for our freedoms.” Stands to reason they can’t be allowed to read just anything they want–they might get the wrong ideas.

This is a war for freedom, that could last forever. Freedom is a luxury we can’t afford until it’s over.

Which reminds me of an insightful Medium Lobster post on Fafblog!:

Recently a few distressed voices in the wilderness have been raised in alarm at the newest, darkest, and most dangerous threat to America’s success in the war on terror: the media. Morton Kondracke recently pointed out that the media “is in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq. And the results would be catastrophic.” He goes on to pin the West’s Iraq problems squarely where they belong: on the media’s fixation with the Abu Ghraib scandal. How astute, Mr Kondracke! For it was in fact the press’s obsession with military torture that allowed the the Shiite and Sunni insurgencies to claim whole cities from the American occupation.

But what to do about this pernicious enemy within? Analytical wunderkind and concerned lover of law Glenn Reynolds muses, “Freedom of the press, as it exists today (and didn’t exist, really, until the 1960s) is unlikely to survive if a majority — or even a large and angry minority — of Americans comes to conclude that the press is untrustworthy and unpatriotic.” Quite true, Professor Reynolds. And America will likely need that angry minority if we’re to inforce patriotism on our press, and end the nightmarish salvo of information and journalism that threatens to cripple the war effort. For this is not merely a war for freedom. Indeed, it is also a war against freedom – specifically, that freedom which seeks to destroy freedom…..(read the rest…)

So, everybody needs to stop worrying about freedom! We can always worry about freedom later after we’re done fighting for freedom, because too many freedoms are bad for the war for freedom.