The Freedom Bit

Pride in work encourages one to make a better product. Pride gives motivation to do better at everything we do, and encourages us to try to bring the rest of the world’s perceptions in line with our own.

A perverted sort of pride also prevents people from admitting to mistakes and faults. While it’s bad for our psychological being to excessively dwell on mistakes, pride becomes a problem when we refuse to rectify them.

When those in power have pride have this kind of pride, the ramifications can be tragic.

Witness this unfortunate case. A man called the police to complain about nuisance phone calls. When the police arrived, they saw the silhouette of a gunman in the living room of the house.

The closed off the street, called the SWAT team, and, when no one answered a knock to the front door, they broke in via the back door.

They were then confronted with the following terrifying image:

It seems the hapless homeowner had a model of Tomb Rader heroine Laura Croft in his living room.

At this point, the police had two choices. They could either:

a) burst out laughing, and mention to the poor chap who just had his house broken into that the bedroom closet might be a better location to store the cardboard cutout with the plastic toy gun.

Or

b) Arrest the poor chap on trumped up firearms charges

Guess which one they chose?

This sort of thing happens all the time, everywhere. A few years ago, a Seattle police officer, not on an emergency call, made an illegal right turn just a few feet in front of me, forcing me to slam on my breaks to avoid a collision. The cop then pulled me over and gave me a ticket for running a red light. (MY light was green, HIS light was red.)

I took the case before a magistrate, who informed me that because the officer said I ran a red light, I must have run a red light, and I was to pay the fine. The officer was too proud to admit his mistake.

According to this episode of This American Life, much the same thing is happening to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. We gathered up hundreds of people though all sorts of questionable methods, most of whom have no connection to any terrorist organizations. We know this now. But we won’t release them, because to do so would be embarrassing.

The story, when explaining why the writ of habeas corpus exists, says: “The king shouldn’t just have the right to just detain somebody because it’d be an embarrassment to have the guy free.” But this is exactly what we are doing.

The government, the presidency, has too much pride to rectify a horrendous, ongoing mistake, and in refusing to get over its pride, only makes the situation worse. Freedom requires humility in public servants.