Patriotism and free minds

Edward P. Morgan, a mid-20th century news analyst and commentator, had strong thoughts on intellectual freedom.

"A book," he wrote, "is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your hand."

His words are among the ideas that greet visitors to Greenville's Sheppard Memorial Library, begging them to consider the liberty that resides there.

Yet as Americans prepare to celebrate their freedoms on the most poignant Independence Day in memory, FBI investigators are quietly visiting libraries and checking reading records of people they suspect are in league with terrorists. They have been granted the permission to pry in this manner by the Patriot Act, signed into law by President Bush last October.

"People are scared and they think by giving up their rights, especially their right to privacy, they will be safe," said Judith Krug, the American Library Association's director for intellectual freedom. "But it wasn't the right to privacy that let terrorists into our nation."

That perspective may seem out of order on a July 4th when fireworks will carry ghost images of collapsing skyscrapers.

Yet in the 1950s, when Morgan and others offered words of dissent, wholesale fear of communism drove red-crazed attacks against intellectual freedom and individual rights. Twenty-five years later, communism collapsed, imploded by a basic human desire for liberty.

There is not much of a hue and cry this Independence Day against the practice of checking people's reading records, or other indiscretions quietly under way courtesy of Washington's ironically named bill. But there should be.