We concluded our class about media and war in a discussion of the Pentagon Papers. The Supreme Court voted on the side of the press, deeming that the first amendment right of the New York Times and Washington Post stands. Professor Adler mentioned that if this case didn’t end the way it did, our world would be a pretty scary place. If the freedom of the press was not maintained during the United States v. New York Times Co. case, there would always be a precedent to subdue whatever the executive branch wanted under the guise of national security. “Congress shall make no law” was taken in the most literal of sense. And if this law was not maintained, it would lead to the unraveling of our entire existence as a democratic nation.
Yet the line is too thin. The most obvious piece of logic is that if our country was defeated because of a national security violation these laws wouldn’t even exist from the beginning. We need a democratic government to uphold the Bill of Rights, and without the national security to ensure that, it simply won’t work. I am not advocating for the president to have the-end-all-and-be-all in matters of national security. Rather, for qualifications, for stipulations. To say no law means no law is simply impossible, and simply not what our founding fathers intended. To argue this point will end in the demise of our nation. There needs to be some mechanism of security, especially when citizens unleashed the original documents in an illegal matter. The situation becomes wholly different.
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