FREEDOM FOR WHAT? :

Closeting U.S. spies : Publisher Roger Straus and his Cold War partnership with U.S. intelligence (Jack Shafer, 4/09/02, SLATE.COM)

Here's more evidence that the '70s are over. Last week, when The New Yorker helped publisher Roger Straus out himself and his company, Farrar, Straus & Co., as closeters of American spies during the Cold War, no publication or Web site aggregated by either Nexis or Google wrote a word about it. (Victor Navasky, call your office!)

Writer Ian Parker delivers the spooks scoop at about the 3,600-word mark of his 9,200-word puff profile of Straus (Showboat: Roger Straus and his flair for selling literature, April 8, 2002, The New Yorker). Parker writes that Straus discloses for the first time in public his decadelong partnership with an unnamed U.S. intelligence agency, which ran from the postwar '40s to the mid-'50s. [...]

Does Anybody Care? Judging from the silence greeting the scoop - and The New Yorker's willingness to bury it - I reckon that Parker is right. Nobody is surprised. Nobody cares. Not even the left. But it was wrong for the government to ask Straus for cover, and anything but patriotic for him to surrender his independence by agreeing.

In the first place, this column is offensive for the way in which Mr. Shafer impugns the reputation of America's Cold War spies in general and Mr. Straus in particular. The use of such loaded terms as "out himself" and "closeters", with their implications of homosexual shame, is despicable. I've no idea of the sexuality of any of the men involved, nor do I care, but the idea that they needed to be or were ashamed of their wartime service to the nation is appalling.

Meanwhile, Mr. Shafer's high dudgeon over the lack of outrage at their service reflects one of the most serious and widespread misunderstandings of the Constitution. Mr. Shafer apparently believes that maintaining the absolute purity of freedom of the press from any government influence is more important than the very survival of that government. (And in what can only be considered an instance of sheer self-importance, he seems to think it wrong for government to ask a pressman to sacrifice a small measure of independence at a time when it was asking tens of thousands of young men to sacrifice their lives, in Korea, in Vietnam, and elsewhere.) This is, to say the least, an odd way of construing the purposes of the Founders and the Constitution they handed down to us.

Perhaps it would be helpful to refer to the Preamble to the Constitution, which explains the intent of the drafters :

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Note that their aim was to establish a sustainable union which would enable its people to enjoy certain blessings, but that they understood that the state was necessary to secure these blessings. Their focus was not on rights as such, but on creating a well-ordered republic, in which these rights could thrive. In the absence of Order, Union, Justice, Tranquility, and security all rights are illusory; one may assert them but there is no system by which to vindicate them. Folks like Mr. Shafer, and they are all too prevalent these days, make a grave mistake when they seek to elevate a right, like freedom of the press, into an absolute, sufficient unto itself, without regard for the consequences.

Mr. Straus was a patriot, who, when asked, did his part to preserve the United States of America and to defend the Constitution. He understood that, just as we all surrender some measure of liberty when we forge the nation in the first place, during a time of World War it may well be necessary to compromise one's personal liberty in order to preserve the freedom of the nation. Those who refuse to do the former are likely to end up losing the latter. What a paltry, and Pyrrhic victory Mr. Shafer would have had Mr. Straus win by selfishly refusing to serve his country in time of danger.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 12, 2002 2:13 PM