Hey, Chris Christie, I have some friends I want your widows and orphans to meet

By Jim Gourley

Best Defense
all-star commenter

New Jersey's governor has never been one to test the political waters
before diving in. If anything, he owes much of his popularity to his reputation
for taking cannonballs off the party platform with wild abandon. His unabashed
candor has always brought him back to the surface unscathed, even when going so
far as to praise the incumbent Democratic president mere weeks ahead of the
GOP's effort to unseat him. While many still blame him for sinking Romney's
hopes, his fearless honesty seemed to come up more buoyant than ever. But his
most recent plunge into straight talk provides a disturbing window into the
unspoken beliefs of a potential future commander in chief.

The remarks in question were issued
during a forum at the Aspen Institute last month. On the subject of domestic
surveillance and recent revelations of the extent of the government's data
collection, Christie fired off candidly at Republicans such as Kentucky Senator
Rand Paul, labeling their beliefs a "dangerous strain of
libertarianism" and calling their arguments "esoteric." He laid
a rhetorically-jeweled capstone on his comments
by literally bringing the point home:

Listen, you can name any number of people and
[Paul is] one of them.... These esoteric, intellectual debates -- I want them to
come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that
conversation. And they won't, because that's a much tougher conversation to
have.

The lynchpin of Christie's rhetoric is the fundamental assumption that
is ironically best characterized by more esoteric remarks
issued by President Obama when he responded to the initial reports of
government surveillance after the Snowden leaks broke.

But I think it's important to recognize that
you can't have a hundred percent security and also then have a hundred percent
privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we're going to have to make some
choices as a society.

Christie takes the hard line on the issue, taking security over both
privacy and convenience every time. The subtle overtones of "never
again" in his mantra are eerily reminiscent of Dick Cheney. It's a majestic
leap for a man who would be president of the United States.

But it finishes with a belly flop for a guy who'd go stand in front of
the armed forces. The final "go tell the widows and orphans" jab is
profane not as much for its overt melodramatic invocation of bereaved innocents
as for the implicit devaluation of servicemembers. The core ideology is that we
must not sacrifice the lives of innocent American citizens in the interest of
"esoteric" things like privacy or a rationally measured approach to
homeland security. Due process and habeas corpus cannot be allowed to stall the
swift hand of justice when countless lives are at stake. Anyone who disagrees
is a lofty-minded theorist who fails to grasp what's at stake.

Christie wants us all to understand that we are fighting for security,
here. Not freedom. Not honor. Not some abstract concept in a Lee Greenwood song
or whatever enigmatic principles Article VI of the Code of
Conduct might possibly be referring to. There are already too many dead
American civilians. Whatever freedoms must be sacrificed to prevent more, so be
it.

Perish the thought that a single American civilian should die because we
hesitated to curtail their freedoms. But where does that leave the servicemember
who is repeatedly told that they advance into the jaws of death for the express
purpose of defending freedom? What are the people who suffered grievous injury
supposed to feel if the day comes that President Christie further encroaches on
civil liberties heretofore held as sacrosanct? For one who gave their legs to
the cause of freedom, is this not a second amputation?

Governor Christie gathers his army of innocents behind him and
challenges his libertarian detractors to muster the gall to "say it to
their face." If Senator Paul is either unable or unwilling, then I would
like to personally take Governor Christie up on his offer to discuss the issue.
However, please allow me the small indulgence of choosing the venue for the
debate. I would like for him to come to 1 Memorial Drive in Arlington,
Virginia. You see, if the standard I must meet is to be able to make my
arguments to his friends with a straight face, then it is only fair that the governor
do the same before my friends. I'm sorry if this is too much of a stretch for
him, but as the president said, we have to make some tough decisions as a
society about convenience, security, and freedom. I hate to inconvenience the orphans and widows,
but my friends were forced to make some hard decisions, and they no longer have
the freedom to travel beyond that address.

Jim Gourley is a
frequent contributor to Best Defense.