Frederick Jackson Turner, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, had launched his frontier theory in 1893. It was widely interpreted to imply that democracy, the product of a defunct frontier, could not survive in the new, frontierless environment. That interpretation is often cited as a problem for the theory.
Indeed, peoples' right to choose has faced challenge after challenge in the 20th century. World War I, the Great Depression, World War II or the Cold War could have ended it. It is usual to believe that freedom of the individual has triumphed. However, when recent events are viewed with a skeptical eye, it is not at all clear that American democracy has survived these challenges, particularly the last.
Consider a late product of the Cold War, National Security Defense Directive 145 (NSDD145). The brainchild of an assistant defense secretary in the Reagan Administration, NSDD145 has been used to restrict access to the medical records of the National Cancer Institute and the Veterans Administration, IRS corporate and personal taxpayer files and agricultural statistics.
In 1985, employing NSDD 145 as its authority, the U.S. National Security Agency made a detailed investigation of a computer program used to count votes in local and federal elections. The reason for the investigation was, presumably, to determine the program's vulnerability to manipulation. In order to do that, however, the investigators had to learn how to manipulate the program themselves. (Note: See also "NSA and Microsoft".)
That our right to choose might be affected by a government plot to control elections is a chilling prospect. Yet it is only one of the lesser threats to freedom imposed by enclosure, which is the absence of frontiers. The major threat is environmental.
"The Baltic Sea is dying from sewage and other pollution. Every year 25 billion tons of topsoil are lost. In places like Mexico City and Eastern Europe, millions breathe toxic air. China soon will have cut all its harvestable forests. The ozone is thinning, the globe may be warming, and more devastation lies in store," lamented a 1992 issue of Business Week in describing the new geopolitical fashion called "sustainable development". More a vision than a strategy, the concept of sustainable development calls upon the industrialized nations to consume less while directing billions in aid to developing nations in return for their promise to cut birth rates. Its fundamental premise is that the only way to avoid ecological disaster is to redistribute wealth.
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