I've taken the great input I received from you people, got some sleep and rewrote this. It will be appearing in, at the very least, my local paper in the extremely conservative Western town in which I live. I am bracing for the storm of shit that is headed my way. Actually, it's kinda exciting! ;)
Pardon me for posting this one last time. It's more concise now.
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From the moment the first plane hit the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, the notion of "safe and free" has eluded we Americans. To a great degree, this is something that we will sadly never recover. Our collective naiveté was thrown back in our faces with incredible force that day. Some would say that we learned a valuable though tragic lesson on September 11, 2001. Some would say that we have learned nothing.
Unfortunately, much of what has taken place since that fateful morning has done little to protect us, and quite a bit to make us less secure--less free. This is precisely what the hijackers wanted.
The First Concession: The USA PATRIOT Act
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Congress hastily passed the USA PATRIOT Act, with virtually no debate. For the first time in our great history, the government no longer has to show probable cause or obtain a warrant in order to gain access to your medical files, student files or other personal files. They have the same access to the records of the books that you borrow from the library (kudos to the American Library Association for refusing to comply) or buy from the bookstore. They have the freedom to access the server logs that will tell them about your web surfing habits--where you go and what you read online. Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that secret searches allow them the same unimpeded freedom to enter and search your home when you are not there. You would never be informed that an investigating is or was taking place.
The government has the freedom to investigate you, without showing probable cause, whether you are a suspected terrorist or not. In fact, they are already using these potentially dangerous tools to investigate citizens who are not suspected of terrorism. These investigations can be brought into action by the books you read, the church you attend, the web sites you visit, the editorials you write, or simply by the whims of the Department of Justice.
Modifications to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States have been made in order to give them these freedoms.
To date, information gathered using the powers that the USA PATRIOT Act bestowed upon the government has not affected the threat from terrorists. The president, the DoJ and intelligence-gathering community have always had enough power, they simply weren't using it correctly.
PATRIOT II promises to erode our freedoms even further, allowing your citizenship to be revoked at the whim of the DoJ with no judicial oversight. This would cause you to immediately lose every right that you have as a citizen, including access to a lawyer. The draft version of PATRIOT II lists "civil disobedience" as a possible cause for revoking someone's citizenship. This is remarkably and profoundly un-American.
As Abraham Lincoln said, "Those who are ready to sacrifice freedom for security ultimately will lose both."
The Second Concession: Stifling Dissent
Part of the fallout of the USA PATRIOT Act is the fear that it will be implemented against those that choose to exercise the rights guaranteed to them by the First Amendment.
The incredible fear that many Americans felt immediately following the horrors of 9/11 has also given way to a new definition of the word patriot. In coffee shops and around the water-cooler, in churches and on campuses, in libraries and in newsrooms, people are more afraid to speak their minds than ever. The all-American notion that "dissent is patriotic" has given way to the notion that "unquestioning support of the president" is patriotic. Teddy Roosevelt deemed this mistaken notion as nothing less than treasonous. To bastardize the word patriot in this way is to insult every soldier that has ever put on that uniform to serve this country, including the young men and women fighting and dying in Iraq as you read this. Of course, soldiers are not the only patriots--this is an insult to every freedom-loving American. The forefathers are spinning in their graves.
Additionally, "Free-Speech Zones" allow protestors to be herded out of sight or earshot of anywhere that the president appears, including motorcade routes, so that their voices are heard neither by the public nor the objects of their discontent. People are being arrested for not standing in the right place.
On the eve of the war in Iraq, the Pentagon handed down an unprecedented order barring media coverage or photography of homecoming ceremonies for our dead heroes--the real patriots. For this administration, flag-draped caskets are regarded simply as bad publicity. This is the reality of war, and this restriction is an insult to both the families of the dead and the American people.
Voices that need to be heard--now more than ever--are being squelched for fear of retribution. This can include anything from the loss of a friend or a job, to revoked citizenship and a secret, indefinite, all-expenses paid trip to Guantanamo, Cuba, depending on the level of your paranoia.
The Third Concession: Turning World Opinion Against Us
More than a half-century of diplomatic gains have been undone in the last year, and no one can argue the fact that most of the rest of the world no longer respects us. Immediately following 9/11, things were much different. The prevailing attitude that swept much of the civilized world was "We are all Americans." Much has been said about the unfortunate and unparalleled squandering of an enormous amount of world-wide goodwill toward the U.S. This has already come back to haunt us, and we'll be in Iraq quite a bit longer as a result. Alienating ourselves from the rest of the world is short-sighted, to say the least.
Many Americans feel that "going it alone" is the American Way, but what they don't understand, or refuse to acknowledge, is that the world is a tiny, ever-shrinking place. The rest of the world liking us, or at the very least, respecting us, is important to the survival of this great nation. If a little diplomacy is too much to ask for, we can at least try to be civil. As it turns out, the French don't have a patent on arrogance.
In the past, we were no less than a beacon of freedom and liberty that much of the rest of the world looked up to. Now we are living down to the low-expectations of those who hate us for being free.
The Fourth Concession: Holy War/Cultivating the Threat
The messages that are relayed to us through the conservative mass media engender fear in many Americans. Much more worrisome is the fact that the actions of the current administration continue to propagate the actual threat of more terrorism. The "War on Terrorism" is actually furthering the terrorists' agenda by creating more of them, uniting them, cementing their resolve, and finally giving them real reasons to hate us.
Osama bin-Laden had one overarching goal when he set his terrible plan into action a little more than two years ago. Simply put, he wanted to draw us into a holy war. It is extremely worrisome that many people around the world, and even some here at home, see our ongoing military actions as a war of "Christians versus Muslims". For those of you that slept through history class, the Crusades were a bad thing, to say the least.
The ill-conceived war in Iraq is quickly becoming this generation's Viet Nam. Our mighty military is stretched thin, and we are stuck in a quagmire with no exit plan and Iraqi resistance growing stronger every day. Around the country, draft boards are being staffed at an ever-quickening pace. Those who thought that forced conscription ended along with the Viet Nam war may have an unpleasant surprise in the near future. Republican Congressman and Viet Nam hero, John McCain, has recently articulated the disturbing parallels between the old quagmire and the new one.
The Reality of These Concessions
Today, freedom and democracy exist only as crude, fragmented, tattered and altogether illusory counterfeits, along with the notion of safety that is foisted upon us by the current administration.
In a misguided and artificial effort to protect us, our leaders have ensured that the 9/11 hijackers did not die in vain. The freedom-haters have succeeded in destroying much of what it means to be free in America. The terrorists have succeeded in creating an enduring fear among us.
American democracy is falling upon its own sword. Our leaders are complicit in this crime.
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
