The term “national security” has become like the word “racism.” It has been applied so liberally for so long that its overstretched usage has rendered it meaningless. Definitions necessarily require a limited and fixed meaning. If everyone is a “racist” then no one is. If everything becomes “national security” then nothing is.
Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona announced this month that obesity “affects our national and global security.” We also learned this month that the Department of Homeland Security believes that “climate change has the potential to accelerate and intensify extreme weather events which threaten the nation’s sustainability and security.” Being fat is a matter of “national security?” Global warming falls into the category of “national security?” Really?
The entire WikiLeaks controversy has hinged upon the question of whether or not the whistleblower group has compromised America’s national security. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says it has not, yet adds, “The initial assessment in no way discounts the risk to national security.” So there you have it. WikiLeaks’ mere existence represents a permanent threat to national security. As dictated and defined by whom? The federal government, which not-so-coincidentally continues to vaguely say that everything WikiLeaks does is a potential threat to national security, while never being able to cite anything specifically, per Gates’s admission.
Given the free and open nature of the internet, as enjoyed by WikiLeaks, Sen. Joe Lieberman has introduced the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010,” which would allow government regulation of the internet in the name of protecting the nation’s financial security, even giving the president a “kill switch” ability to shut down the entire internet. Despite Congress denying the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) such power and federal courts declaring it unconstitutional, last week the FCC pushed forward. Said Sen. Jim DeMint of this legislation, “Americans loudly demanded a more limited federal government this November, but the Obama Administration has dedicated itself to expanding centralized government planning. Today, unelected bureaucrats rammed through an internet takeover, even after Congress and the courts warned them not to.” Apparently, Sen. DeMint does not understand the government’s unlimited concept of “national security.”
