Democratic Party Ninth District

The threat of world-wide terrorism in recent years has given new meaning to a persistent debate in this country over how to balance public safety with civil liberties, the rights guaranteed to all citizens of the United States by the Constitution. Many people who are concerned about the dangers that our country faces seem to view civil liberties as a nice idea when circumstances permit, but inconvenient, and even dangerous, when they seem to make it more difficult to deal with crime, terrorism, or political dissent. They argue that civil liberties are luxuries we cannot afford. This view is at odds not only with the founding principles of our country, but with the realities of personal and national security.

The idea that civil liberties are impediments to security is based on a false opposition between the complementary goals of freedom and safety. The founders of the United States understood that civil liberties were actually necessary to ensure safety, because they knew from hard personal experience that a government that was unchecked in its power over its people was far more dangerous than any enemy. Civil liberties are the only check to governmental abuses. Agovernment that is unaccountable to its citizens and unrestrained in what it is allowed to do to them cannot be trusted to preserve the well-being of anyone because it is not held responsible for the safety or well-being of any individual or group, but merely seeks to preserve itself at all costs.

One of the supreme ironies of our current national discourse over civil liberties is that many people who express utter disdain for the government in most respects nevertheless display a childlike trust in that same government to safeguard their well-being as it gradually takes away their freedoms. Some argue that the founders of our country did not foresee the dangers that America faces in today's world, and therefore could not have anticipated the need to curtail civil liberties. The reality, however, is that the founders did not enshrine our civil liberties in the Constitution at a time when our country was powerful and unchallenged, but rather when it was young, weak, and threatened by many external and internal dangers. They knew that a free people were inevitably stronger than subjects of a tyranny.

Today, the protection of our civil liberties should not be a partisan issue, and the warnings of people from across the political spectrum, from conservatives such as Bob Barr to liberals such as Russ Feingold, show that the threats to our essential freedoms are a vital concern to all Americans. We need to fight misguided efforts to trade liberty for safety, no matter how well-intended, no matter who tries to tell us we must. It has been said that the terrorists attacked us because they hate our freedom. What does it say, then, when we allow our own government to violate our civil liberties in the name of some temporary illusion of security?