Jeff -- smart post...I agree...i'm troubled by those that look at the 4th amendment and say, "yeah...but if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about." whatever! history shows if you give the govt an inch, they'll take a mile. it's simply human nature mixed with the constant quest for power.
dylan, Jeff, etc: I am not so naive to think that there won't be some abuses, there probably will. I can just not see any other way to catch these guys before they attack. I was serious when I mentioned the nuclear plant near Houston. The CIA apparently thinks that Al Qaeda has at least one "dirty nuke" (a radiological weapon) as well, and if used it could kill several million people and make a large swath of the country uninhabitable for 100,000 years. Would you guys really want to keep your freedoms if such was the price (reminding you that you may be among the dead and no longer need any freedoms)? I don't think you guys realize how necessary it is to catch these guys before they strike. If they are not caught then millions of Americans could be killed. As for the drug war, IMO it is the second war we've lost next to Vietnam. I'm personally in favor of blanket decriminalization as the only way to win that "war". I also do not think that comparing that situation to this one is appropriate. For one thing, the drug war is completely self-inflicted. For another, it is a largely political war. For another, despite what officials may tell you it is not a threat to our national survival. The war on terrorism has none of those qualities: it is largely an external threat (even though we're being attacked from the inside, the source is external), and it is a threat to our national survival: if the terrorists start getting their hands on real WMD and we lose then the US may cease to exist and we could all die. That is not the case with the drug war. You guys have a choice (well, actually, it's not up to you): give up some relatively minor personal "freedoms" or risk dying.
Haven't hundreds of thousands of men and women risked their lives or died fighting for our right to have these freedoms before? If we give up on them simply because we are threatened again, that would seem to be a horribly dishonorable thing to do on their behalf. I agree that there should be a balance to the freedoms we hold dear, but I would hope that we as Americans would not be so afraid of death that we would give up many of the freedoms those who came before us died to create and/or protect.
Jeff: We've never been faced with the prospect of destruction before. I really cannot think of any right that could be important to a dead man... Frankly, I think that everyone here is overreacting to this. I'd like someone here to give me a specific "right" that will be lost, and is worth dying for. One right that will be lost because of this, I'd like to hear it.
Actually, I agree but I agree both ways. I think we are overreacting to the terrorist threat as much as we are to the squelching of civil rights. The WTC attack was HORRIBLE but I just don't see this as the beginning of a constant threat to the US on anywhere near the same level.
So you think that Al Qaeda's finished? I wouldn't bet too much on that one. And if they've actually got a "dirty nuke"... It could make the WTC look like a walk in the park.
I'm glad the founding fathers of this country didn't think like this....... It's freedom as a whole that stands to be compromised.....one right at a time.
That's pretty vague. Care to be a little more specific? I just want to hear one right that anyone thinks they will lose because of this. Just one.
I didn't say that either. But I don't believe this is the apocolypse! I am more afraid of a drunk driver killing me on the highway or a drive-by shooting than I am of bin Laden Inc. dropping a nuke on me. Either way, I'm not going to spend the rest of my life terrified of what may or may not happen. I spent my entire childhood living with nightmares almost nightly of nuclear oblivion thanks to The Day After and cold war rhetoric. As a result, I've almost completely avoided the news over the past couple of days and I plan on increasing that avoidance. Nothing good can come from my (or any other of us common folk) obsession or preoccupation with events that we cannot control. I'll leave that to the experts. I have a life to live.
What about the right to free speech? Let's say, for example, someone who lives in the US said that we deserved what we got. Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that that person might be detained and held for an extended period of time without charges, possibly having his/her house search and items like computers and files confiscated? Sounds like the freedom of expression goes bye bye followed by due process and protection from search and seizure laws. The best comparision I can think of is the Olympic Park bombing when that guy was plastered all over the world as terrorist #1 when it turned out he had done absolutely nothing wrong. It was ok to screw up his life and toss many of his rights out the window even if he wasn't guilty at all. Personally, I don't think we'll see a lot of it, but what concerns me is what will happen to rights we give up AFTER this is all over. We may find it difficult if not impossible to get them back.
If we detain and search every idiot who says that we got what we deserved, we'll never find anyone. We need to be more selective, and I think the authorities are aware of this. As it is, they've got their hands full with hoaxes... But do you honestly feel - personally - that even losing two or three days to a severe background check (most would not be that severs) is a great sacrifice to make in the greater scheme of things? If it is then you are a selfish prick, as I stated earlier. (I'm not calling you a selfish prick, Jeff) It is the only way to catch these guys before they strike. How so? If you don't fit the profile (and we do need to follow a profile here, since all of the perpetrators follow the same one), then none of this will even touch you. If you fit the profile but are innocent, then you'll get a minor inconvenience and then be cleared. If you fit the profile and are guilty then I don't give a sh*t about your rights. I don't think we'll lose very much to begin with, and I don't think that it will be very difficult to get back the rights we've "lost". Most of what we might lose will be privelages, not rights, in the first place. And once things have cooled down I think they'll be quite easy to get back. As long as we put our local and national representatives into power with a vote, we can tell them what rights we want by voting them out if we are denied them. Over the long term we have that control. Over the short term, they are in total control over what "rights" and "privelages" we have. I hope they do enough to catch these as*holes. No less, and no more.
