Legalism Versus Life

December 16, 2001

by John F. Schmidt

Can common sense even get a hearing against bureaucratic regulations? You decide.

Kathlene Hensman, a South Florida librarian reported to the FBI that she noticed three of her former patrons were the same men later identified by the FBI as the pilots of the September 11 suicide planes. Aware that they had used the computer facilities in the library, she called the FBI and reported this fact. She was subsequently disciplined by the library for revealing confidential information about a person’s use of public facilities without a court order.

Should she have been disciplined because she divulged information relating to the use of a public library by someone who was later identified as a national terror suspect?

State law protects a person’s right to use a library, or any public facility, without having the record of the use being made public. Under our American concept of civil liberty, government agencies don’t have a presumptive right to pry into the private activities of people. A court order is required to release that information, and good that we have such laws. As free citizens, we want the government to be restricted in its use of information about its citizens.

On the other hand, Ms. Hensman made a fairly logical inference that since people she recognized as terrorist suspects had used the library’s computers, it was possible they may have used them for communicating information which could have a bearing on the FBI’s investigation. The FBI had asked anyone with information about the terrorist’s activities to report it, so she called them.

It is highly unlikely that the FBI would have been able to deduce that this particular library was used by the highjackers, so it is unlikely that the records of their use of the computers would have ever come to light had the librarian not acted as she did.

On Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor, December 5, 2001, Mary Dempsey, the commissioner of the Chicago public library, stated that she agreed the Florida librarian acted illegally. She had “enough faith in the FBI to obtain a court order,” but she herself would not have volunteered to the FBI that the highjackers were even in the library. The incredulous Bill O’Reilly took her to task stating this was a “national security issue,” and because the FBI could never have been able to obtain a court order for information they didn’t know existed. Mrs. Dempsey was adamant that the confidentiality of the highjackers’ use of the library took higher precedence than national security.

This incident is part of a disturbing trend that reveals a total inability to make moral choices when there is a conflict between principles. A coherent picture emerges of a people who no longer have a moral foundation in absolute truth.

Those who still reason from a theologically based worldview have little problem in sorting out the choices when there are apparent conflicts between rules and regulations. The greater moral good is always the right choice. In the case of the librarian, the principle of protecting the privacy of the average user of public services is clearly outweighed by the higher priority of protecting the overall national safety of all the people. No one but a legalist would have a problem with that point of view.

To have to state this obvious truth is almost painful, yet multitudes of individuals in this society have no clue how to behave in such a position as the Delray Beach librarian. Thank God she had the common sense to make the right decision, otherwise the FBI would certainly have been without the records of potentially relevant communications between terrorists.

The reason why we as a people seem to be losing this moral discernment is the prevalent rejection among our intelligencia of God as the basis of reality and meaning. This basis has been replaced by a practical Atheism and moral relativism. In this new worldview, there are no moral absolutes, and hence there is no way to judge the relative value of conflicting moral choices. Decisions become simply a matter of determining which rules affect a person the most forcibly, and ignore anything else.

Library rules are the most important to a librarian. It does not make any difference that the FBI needed the information, and they would most likely never been able to obtain a court order without being informed. From her Chicago librarian position, Dempsey simply opined that the FBI would have to do a better job of searching for evidence, because the library rules maintain a strict confidentiality. That is the ‘safe’ choice for her.

It is suicidal for any society to allow itself to be boxed in by rules which make it impossible to defend itself. But that is exactly what we have been doing.

One name for this phenomenon is legalism. It is the belief in a system of forms and rules, rather than a devotion to the rarer search for justice. Justice is a transcendent thing that is defined against a divine standard. Since we have been busily removing that kind of standard from our society, there isn’t much left but legalism.

Legalism produces such paradoxes as the release of a confessed murderer and rapist because he was not read his Miranda rights correctly. Is he guilty? No doubt. Is justice being served? That is not even a legitimate question. The only questions allowed are whether the rules were followed. And that, of course, is insane.

Legalism pits the American Library Society against parents who don’t want their children using the public library computers to view pornography. It protects pedophiles who use the computers to view smut, and contact others of like warp. It erects a barrier to the higher moral rules of decency and parental oversight, and creates an immoral free-fire zone in which our children are the targets, and no one - even the librarians - can do anything about it.

The Chicago librarian is operating in the legalist world. The Delray librarian is operating in the justice world. Which world is the real world? That question has an answer. “All live [with reference to] Him” Luke 20:38. God’s world is the real world, and He defines the rules of justice and right. Judges are to judge “righteous judgment,” not mere adherence to legal technicalities (John 7:24). In the real world there are rules too, but they exist to guide the determination of guilt and innocence. The rules themselves do not constitute justice; they only serve to establish it.

We should remember that Jesus ran into some legalists, too. He was criticized by Pharisees who were so bound by the law they insisted that healing on the Sabbath was wrong because it was “work.” These legalists so twisted God’s intentions that they believed Man was made for the Sabbath. Jesus corrected this by healing and pointing out that the “Sabbath was made for Man.” (Mark 2:27). Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, and He is also Lord of all librarians. Like Him, the Delray librarian was persecuted for doing what was right.

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John F. Schmidt has written numerous articles over the last decade. Politically, he is an Alan Keyes-type Republican. Along with his wife, he has organized voter drives in Pennsylvania, and been active politically since the 1990 elections. His livelihood, until recently, was spent in automation engineering for a large global equipment manufacturing company, specializing in coal mining. WANB in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania hosted Schmidt's weekly talk radio program "Issues and Answers." His writing is intended to relate the headlines of today to the foundation of eternal truth - the Scriptures. He currently resides in Palm Beach County, Florida. Visit his website at: Inalienable-Rights.org

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