Do 2A Supporters Make the Same Mistake?

[TX1911fan]

I read this with interest today, and liked the conclusion so much I made it my signature line. Does it apply to those of us who vehemently support the Second Amendment? Do we run the risk of getting nothing if we make our RKBA an all or nothing proposition?

Christopher Caldwell has a fascinating essay in--of all places--the New York Times magazine, in which he ponders the future of civil liberties:

Just hours before the police arrested 24 British-born Muslims suspected of plotting to blow up as many as 10 airliners over the Atlantic, the British home secretary, John Reid, gave a comprehensive description of how Tony Blair's government saw the war on terror. Reid, who probably knew the raids were coming, called international terrorism the gravest threat to Britain since World War II and attacked civil libertarians as people who "just don't get it." He highlighted a speech that Blair had made little more than a week earlier. Global terrorism, Blair said then, "means traditional civil liberty arguments are not so much wrong as just made for another age."

If you wanted to figure out how the airline plot will change the West, Blair's words would be a good place to start. . . . Blair was not trying to buck us up and steel our resolve by saying that we're at war and that we'll have to pitch in and sacrifice our liberties for a while. He was saying that war has shown many of our liberties to be illusory. The "civil liberties" we know do not bubble up from natural law or from something timeless and universal in the human character. They may be significant accomplishments, but they are temporal ones, bound to certain stages of technology or to certain styles of social organization. Maybe there was something like an Age of Civil Liberties, Blair was telling us, but it is over.​

We must say, we are highly ambivalent about this. We are quite fond of our civil liberties and would hate to lose them. On the other hand, we're appalled at the fatuousness of today's civil libertarians, who seem to care more about terrorists' rights than national security. That very much includes the New York Times, with its penchant for compromising national secrets.

In an age of terror, society ought to be able to strike a reasonable balance between civil liberties and national security. By insisting that liberty is an all-or-nothing proposition, civil libertarians make it more likely that we will eventually end up with nothing.​

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008827

 

[Number 6]

Yes, people on both sides make logical and philosophic errors that do not aid in their causes.

 

[Technosavant]

You need to figure this into the analysis:

Will restricting this right lead to the desired effect?

It's one thing to say that X-raying and checking for explosive residue on luggage will help cut down on problems on the plane. It's quite another to assert that draconian gun control will lead to a drop in crime, healthier children, happier citizens, and a general feeling of joy and happiness, even among three legged puppies.

It may not be all or nothing, but those who aren't civil libertarians need to pay very close attention to the rights they give away, and to whom they are given, as well as thinking about what might happen if those people become untrustworthy.

 

[harvester of sorrow]

"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin

As true today as it was then.

 

[springmom]

No way

They may be significant accomplishments, but they are temporal ones, bound to certain stages of technology or to certain styles of social organization. Maybe there was something like an Age of Civil Liberties, Blair was telling us, but it is over.

This scares the bejeepers out of me. Granted England IS the country we had to revolt FROM...

I would suggest that Mr. Blair and his government read the writings of our Founding Fathers, who have a very different view of the source of civil liberties. "Endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights", if I recall correctly. Yes, the technology changes and the world is different, but we cannot move an inch, cannot move an iota, from the rock-solid understanding that our liberty is NOT something that can be taken by philosophical sleight-of-hand by rulers who find it much more convenient to be able to ignore it at will.

Give me liberty, or give me death.

Springmom

 

[pax]

That concluding sentence sure smacks of "You'd better give your freedom to us, or we'll take it anyhow."

What I really want to know is, if the terrorists hate our freedom so much, why are we so eager to do their dirty work in getting rid of it?

pax

 

[mljdeckard]

On the other hand, how foolish would we be to let them use the same freedoms we cling to to defeat us?

Most of the Americans who praised the sting in Britain last week don't realize that this was done under powers much more invasive than anything the war or The Patriot Act have brought about. They use an 'interventionist' policy in hunting terrorists, using tactics like unwarranted 'sneak and peek' to follow the terrorists. ALSO, few people understand that in Britain, they don't have the "Fruit of the Poisoned Tree" precedent that we recognize in America, which means any evidence discovered consequent to a dirty search is thrown out with the search. In Britain, they scold the police, BUT THE EVIDENCE STAYS IN.

The Constitution is NOT a suicide pact. I do NOT want it written on my tombstone: "Protected the rights of terrorists". We are at war. I WANT TO WIN IT. I'll tell you how to tell you when the government has gone too far. When Patriot Act-style legislation is enacted which wants to register and track firearms.

All wars require special powers. I'll let Bush have his war. I hope he makes the most of it while he's in office. Ten years from now, we will be faced with a situation where we must act, and whomever is in office will want to think more than act. THEN, we will be longing for the good old W days. As long as they trust me to have my guns, I will trust them to be my government.

 

[DKSuddeth]

The Constitution is NOT a suicide pact.

no, it's not. But we have to remember that 'we the people' wanted to protect our rights, our freedoms, and our way of life. WE either do that now, or we let a central government with a standing army do those things for us. I particularly am not comfortable with the consequences of the latter.

'Live free or die'.

 

[Oleg Volk]

Constitution is not a suicide pact. But the digressions from it, which our government is foisting upon us, are lethal to both our liberties and our security.

 

[Standing Wolf]

What I really want to know is, if the terrorists hate our freedom so much, why are we so eager to do their dirty work in getting rid of it?

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

 

[TallPine]

Just what is it that these "terrists" are going to do to us...?

Sure, 9-11 was horrifying and infuriating, but in retrospect the nation survived it quite well. The chance of any one of us dying or being injured in a terror attack is infintessimal compared to chances of dying from a mundane accident, disease, or domestic crime.

We all die sooner or later, it's just a question of when. Actually, it's a question of how do we want to live the short time we have - cowering in fear or bravely facing each new day ?????

If we treated hurricanes like terror, we would permanently abandon everything within 50 miles of our SE and Gulf coast

The "terrists" seem like a handy excuse for politicians to do what they could not otherwise get away with: create a totalitarian state. It is really quite a synergistic relationship between western governments and AQ.

 

[MatrimCauthom]

Edited for content...

 

[grampster]

Any government act that is done in the interest of national security during a time of war must be specifically directed at the enemy and must have a reasonable sunset clause.

Perhaps if a sizeable portion rather than the 30 to 45% of those who can vote at election time, actually did, and actually were aware of the issues, understood the value of American culture, knew our history, understood the function of government, and decent men and women (patriots) stood up for election, and then followed through, maybe we might trust those in power a bit more.
So far, I don't see it. Some of us are Americans. The vast majority are sheeple; are too self centered and lazy.

 

[nico]

ALSO, few people understand that in Britain, they don't have the "Fruit of the Poisoned Tree" precedent that we recognize in America, which means any evidence discovered consequent to a dirty search is thrown out with the search. In Britain, they scold the police, BUT THE EVIDENCE STAYS IN.

I'm not sure if you're advocating the British policy, but that precedent is very important IMO. If there are no consequences for walking all over a person's rights, what's to stop unethical cops from doing it? Without the "poisoned fruit" precedent, what's to stop vehicle searches from becoming a standard procedure with traffic stops? As it is, an unfortunately large number of cops take advantage of people's ignorance of their rights by making them think they have to let a cop search their car if asked.
There are already way too many people whose mentality is that they have to do whatever a cop asks them to do, regardless of what rights they might have. Britain's policy, as you described it, just encourages that mentality.

 

[TX1911fan]

Listen, we already sacrifice certain liberties to live in a society. I agree that in order to be permitted to drive a car, I have to abide by certain rules. If I want to shop at the mall, I have to wear clothes. If I want to carry a handgun, I have to get a license. If I want to attend a movie, I can't yell FIRE unless there is one. If I want to criticize the President, I can't send him a note saying I'm going to kill him. If I'm mad at my neighbor, I can't beat him with a baseball bat.

We are not talking about giving up ALL of our liberty or freedom. The question is, given the war we are in, does it make sense to give up more in order to beat an enemy that understands us far better than we understand them. They know where are weaknesses lie, and use every tool in their arsenal to exploit them. Does it make sense to keep proclaiming "give me liberty or give me death" as we indeed march to our death? If I remember correctly, Patrick Henry uttered those words because he was fighting for SOME liberty, not being asked to give up some. Maybe we shouldn't kill any terrorists. Our soldiers should just head out on the battlefield with non-lethal weapons, capture them, and then we can give them all a trial. Is that better? If it is ok to deprive terrorists in foreign lands of their right to life, why is it not ok to do so here in the USA?

And, you guys in the military, tell me this? When you are out there protecting all these civil liberties, where are yours? Do you have the same freedom of speech we civilians have? How about other civil rights? Of course not. That would reduce the effectiveness of the military. So if our soldiers can sacrifice SOME of their rights in order to win victory, why can't we civilians?

This gets to the heart of the quote. Do we risk getting nothing when we make liberty all or nothing? Would it make more sense to keep some? Sure, I'd prefer NOT to have to get a license to carry my gun. BUT I'm sure glad I'm carrying one.

My opinion of most of our politicians is that they are greedy, lazy, and some are stupid. They take the easy road. Fail to be creative, and care only about saying what will get them what they want right now and get them re-elected. Do I think any of them want to create a totalitarian government? NO. I have seen nothing of the sort. Even as bad as people think the Patriot Act is, how has it been used? And, if it started to be used against ordinary citizens the way some of you think it will be, the outcry would be tremendous. Also, don't forget that the military must be complicit in any totalitarian regime. Do any of you really think the fine men and women in uniform would stand for a dictator in this country? I don't. I have more faith in them than that.

 

[Jim K]

It gives one to think...

What if the president censored the press, closed a couple of hundred newspapers, threw hundreds people in prison without trial for merely speaking against the war, took a particularly obnoxious opponent prisoner and handed him over to the enemy, gave the military almost unlimited permission to arrest and imprison anyone opposing them, and in general trampled on civil liberties and constitutional rights wholesale?

No, George W. Bush has not done those things, but Abraham Lincoln did. FWIW, Jefferson Davis, who was a much more principled man, and who believed in the rights of the people (except for some people, of course), did none of them and suffered public and press opposition throughout the war, making no effort to stop it.

P.S. Lincoln's side won. The side that was careful to protect civil rights lost. Is there a lesson there?

Jim

 

[harvester of sorrow]

So if our soldiers can sacrifice SOME of their rights in order to win victory, why can't we civilians?

Well, for one reason, the armed forces have given up some of their rights and are fighting so that we don't HAVE to give up any of ours. This is what is known as selfless sacrifice for the common good. As a part of joining the armed forces, they swear to protect and defend something called the Constitution against all enemies foreign or domestic. The Constitution enumerates (but doesn't grant) rights that we, the citizens of the United States, believe to be ours by virtue of being in this country. If we're fearfully giving these rights away, there's no point in having a military.

I agree that in order to be permitted to drive a car, I have to abide by certain rules.

You're confusing a privilege with a right.

If I want to shop at the mall, I have to wear clothes.

This is not a "right."

If I want to carry a handgun, I have to get a license.

In Vermont you don't, sadly in other places you do. This is an egregious example of the State taking a right away from you that it was never supposed to have any control over.

If I'm mad at my neighbor, I can't beat him with a baseball bat.

This is also not a "right." In fact, doing this deprives your neighbor of HIS rights, and is therefore just as morally unacceptable as allowing a government to victimize its citizens in the same way.

If it is ok to deprive terrorists in foreign lands of their right to life, why is it not ok to do so here in the USA?

Put quite simply, because the same Constitution that you seem so hell-bent on castrating says that in the United States, nobody can be deprived of life, freedom, or property without due process of law. It doesn't even suggest that we should arrest and try enemy combatants on the battlefield.

Do any of you really think the fine men and women in uniform would stand for a dictator in this country?

Well, I would hope not. However, the Framers of the Constitution decided that we would never have to worry ourselves about that one way or another if they made clear what our rights as citizens of the United States would be. As long as we continue to keep those rights strong, we won't need to concern ourselves.

Lincoln's side won. The side that was careful to protect civil rights lost. Is there a lesson there?

No, there's not. The Confederacy's loss can hardly be blamed on being overly-protective of civil rights. The population base of the North versus that of the South and the disparities inherent in a conflict between an industrialized economy and an agrarian economy are the two largest contributing factors.

Edited to add: It seems very counterintuitive to suggest that the way to protect our rights is to give some of them up.

 

[Wes Janson]

We are not talking about giving up ALL of our liberty or freedom. The question is, given the war we are in, does it make sense to give up more in order to beat an enemy that understands us far better than we understand them.

This is the fundamental disconnect though, that the supporters of the GWOT don't seem to get, or want to acknowledge. On The History Channel, this evening, they mentioned that 6,821 US troops died during the Battle of Iwo Jima, over a time span of roughly a month and a half. Plus several times that number wounded. That was only one battle, in one theatre, over a short period of the war. What does that mean? It means that the enemy we were fighting had considerable military strength. It means, the Japanese were a significant and credible opponent that arguably posed a grave threat to the continental United States (and most certainly Hawaii and Alaska). Likewise, we spent the better part of half a century on the edge of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. If someone or something had caused one side or the other to launch, the results would really, truly, be "unimaginable". Best case scenario, to hope for in the event of an full exchange, would be the survival of our species.

My issue has been, and continues to be: where is the comparison? How can any of our politicians honestly claim that "Terrorism!" presents a greater threat to modern society than, say, ten or twenty thousand nuclear warheads sitting atop modern delivery systems, with pre-programmed targets, awaiting only the press of a button?

"There is no room for complacency. We are probably in the most sustained period of severe threat since the end of the Second World War.

from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5257518.stm

Then consider what he said after that:

Mr Reid said the "challenge to all of us" means "we may have to modify some of our freedoms in the short-term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy our freedoms and values in the long-term".

Has anyone ever stopped and asked what the costs are? Whether it's reasonable to spend a billion dollars to potentially save one person's life? Is it? Would it still be reasonable if that same money could be used to provide health care to ten thousand people for the rest of their lives? If the government truly had the public's best interests at heart, then why wouldn't it spend the money wisely instead of throwing it at any remote percieved "security threat"? For the sake of argument, we can even ignore the cost of Iraq, and how much our children's children will be burdened by it. Does any of this make any reasonable sense?

P.S. Lincoln's side won. The side that was careful to protect civil rights lost. Is there a lesson there?

I'm not a Civil War historian, but from everything I've heard, the reason the Confederacy lost can be attributed to the economic strength of the North, and the various outcomes of certain battles in the war. I've never heard anyone try to claim that the North won because it was more willing to discard and ignore the civil rights of its citizens. If we're going to base our conclusions on those sorts of assumptions, then I suppose we should also assume that choosing a gray uniform instead of blue was the real reason the CSA lost.

 

[akodo]

Will restricting this right lead to the desired effect?

It's one thing to say that X-raying and checking for explosive residue on luggage will help cut down on problems on the plane. It's quite another to assert that draconian gun control will lead to a drop in crime, healthier children, happier citizens, and a general feeling of joy and happiness, even among three legged puppies.

I disagree with this concept. First off, even if you prove that gun control does reduce crime, I'd still say it should be allowed in the interst of freedom. Freedom isn't safty, freedom is freedom. There are a LOT of ways our civil liberties could be reduced that would have the desired effect. Say doing away with the 'unlawful search and seizure', if cops could listen in on any phonecall, randomly go into what they expect are drug houses, rifle through the files of suspected racketeers and con-men, we'd get more convictions. Doesn't mean it is a good thing.

Listen, we already sacrifice certain liberties to live in a society. I agree that in order to be permitted to drive a car, I have to abide by certain rules. If I want to shop at the mall, I have to wear clothes. If I want to carry a handgun, I have to get a license. If I want to attend a movie, I can't yell FIRE unless there is one. If I want to criticize the President, I can't send him a note saying I'm going to kill him. If I'm mad at my neighbor, I can't beat him with a baseball bat.

I believe this is flawed logic too. The concept of freedom and personal liberty has always stopped when it infringes on another. The argument that 'the land of the free isn't very free if I cannot murder anyone I want' rings hollow to me. Such items are NOT civil liberties. What is civil liberty is the right to drive a car on your own property as fast as you want, with flameballs shooting out, to dance naked in your living room, to criticize the president or give your neighbor the bird. It is your right to be able to go to a movie ungagged, because so far you have not yelled 'FIRE', and it is your right to own a baseball bat, because you have not yet beaten your neighbor with it.


Regarding the concept of 'our civil liberties are defending the people who are trying to destroy us' I disagree here. I think anyone deserves the right to a speedy trial, innocent until proven guilty, the right to free speech even if it is saying 'I hate you', and the right to pray to any diety, even one whom they claim 'commands me to destroy you'

What isn't a civil right is coming to the USA. We need to keep much better watch on who we let in, and once we catch people here illegally, throw them out don't let them argue assylum, political pressure, that they have kids here now, or any other stuff, that should have been on the first legal application.

We don't like doing that because making money is more important than steps to insure safty without trampling on civil liberties. No one wants to disrupt the influx of both poor illegals doing jobs here dirt cheap, or international businessmen willing to make deals and infuse cash and capitol, or tourists whose dollars boost the local economy.

Our civil liberties should be directed at defending us here right now, be they decent people or home grown nutzo terrorists.

 

[Autolycus]

Here is the entire article from the Wall Street Journal...

Essay
The Post-8/10 World
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By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL
Published: August 20, 2006
Just hours before the police arrested 24 British-born Muslims suspected of plotting to blow up as many as 10 airliners over the Atlantic, the British home secretary, John Reid, gave a comprehensive description of how Tony Blair’s government saw the war on terror. Reid, who probably knew the raids were coming, called international terrorism the gravest threat to Britain since World War II and attacked civil libertarians as people who “just don’t get it.” He highlighted a speech that Blair had made little more than a week earlier. Global terrorism, Blair said then, “means traditional civil liberty arguments are not so much wrong as just made for another age.”

Skip to next paragraph

Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images
If you wanted to figure out how the airline plot will change the West, Blair’s words would be a good place to start. Fiery speeches have abounded in the five years since Sept. 11 2001, but this is a radical departure. Blair was not trying to buck us up and steel our resolve by saying that we’re at war and that we’ll have to pitch in and sacrifice our liberties for a while. He was saying that war has shown many of our liberties to be illusory. The “civil liberties” we know do not bubble up from natural law or from something timeless and universal in the human character. They may be significant accomplishments, but they are temporal ones, bound to certain stages of technology or to certain styles of social organization. Maybe there was something like an Age of Civil Liberties, Blair was telling us, but it is over.

This view is not outlandish on its face. The French social scientist Raymond Aron wrote often of war’s “revelatory power.” You can see that power in the way peacetime arrangements that we assume to have a rational basis turn out not to. In that sense, at least, the war on terror is definitely a war. Consider those airport scanning machines, which would never have detected the explosives the British plotters devised. The plan was to bring liquids onto the plane in energy-drink bottles, combine them into an explosive and detonate them with something like a disposable camera or an iPod. The components were benign separately but lethal in combination.

Where did we get the idea that if something didn’t appear on an X-ray, it couldn’t blow up? Those dastardly, snickering villains in old novels and cartoons — the ones who nefariously tied women to railroad tracks — carried bottles of nitroglycerin around the way we carry hand sanitizer. And what made us think that if something could play music or take photos, it couldn’t do anything else? We’ve had camera-phones for half a decade and clock radios for eight. What idiots we were. In order to detect many classes of explosives, we still need to rely, as one weapons analyst from Jane’s told reporters, on “dogs and people taking their clothes off.”

Is Blair calling civil liberties a similar delusion? Do civil liberties cling to our belief system only by custom, in the way that saying “God bless you” when other people sneeze clings to our manners, even though none of us now believes that the sneezer has just blown his soul out through his nose? Well, it depends on what you mean by civil liberties. Blair argues, as did American conservatives in the wake of the Warren Court, that certain legal protections, particularly for accused criminals, are overly punctilious, and damaging to law enforcement. Like George W. Bush, he has wanted to make it easier to extradite terrorism suspects and to intercept suspicious communications. He has gotten Parliament to extend the length of time that suspects can be held without charge. And he has promised to legislate against European human rights law if it interferes with the war on terror. Blair’s opponents equate today’s civil liberties protections with core British values. He is saying they are no such thing — they are temporary adjustments that were useful under certain specific circumstances in part of Europe between World War II and the late 20th century.

Even before Sept. 11, social critics noted that our culture has tended to mistake relatively ephemeral 20th-century phenomena for eternal truths. In 2001, the art historian T.J. Clark marked how the fortunes of (artistic) modernism rose and fell with those of (political) socialism. Modernism, after all, was presented to every educated Westerner born after 1930 as a new canon that would permanently overshadow the old one. But one could infer from Clark’s reading that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, much of 20th-century art and culture would be revealed as a timebound fad, albeit a big and influential one. As indeed it was. In his book “The Great Disruption,” published two years before 9/11, Francis Fukuyama departed from the usual view that the postwar rise in crime, family breakdown and other forms of social disarray was due to either (in the conservative view) the latest sleazy new movie or (in the liberal one) stingy welfare cuts. Larger causes were at work, Fukuyama argued, including the transition from an industrial society to an information one. And yet political leaders are almost bound to take the short-term view rather than the long view.

Some of Britain’s Muslim leaders may also be susceptible to this mistake. Muslims have, after all, been present in Europe en masse for only a very few decades. Many community leaders have rightly understood that contemporary Britain’s commitment to multiculturalism and tolerance hardly amounts to a license of lawlessness. But not all. The sharp-tongued chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque, Mohammad Naseem, greeted the worries about the potential mass murder of flying civilians with a cavalierness almost unbelievable under the circumstances. “With the track record of the police,” Naseem told The Guardian, “one doesn’t have much faith in the basis on which people are detained. And it poses the question whether the arrests are part of a political objective, by using Muslims as a target, using the perception of terrorism to usurp all our civil liberties and get more and more control while moving towards a totalitarian state.” Until five years ago, this kind of talk might have won him a few allies, as well as enemies. Now it is hard even to understand. If Naseem thinks that the rights of defendants are a cause around which 21st-century Britons will rally, he is making a minor misjudgment. If he thinks that the Britain he is addressing is the same Britain that existed from the 1940’s until a few years ago, eager to build bridges between communities and classes, no matter the cost, he is making a major one.

Christopher Caldwell, a contributing writer, is writing a book about Islam, immigration and Europe.

Its scary that British leaders are actually advocating getting rid of civil liberties. In all actuality I believe a lot of 2nd Amendment supporters do this when they advocate extra checks for Muslims or saying that people should get a permit. We do trade a lot of things so that antis will leave us alone but it only is going to get worse.

 

[X Who]

I'd say it's long past time for the British citizens to rise up and take their country back.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_3_oh_to_be.html

 

[toivo]

What I'm afraid of is that these "voluntary" suspensions of civil rights are akin to what I once heard a doctor say about wheelchairs for the elderly: "The problem is that once they sit down, most of them never stand up again."

Are there people out there who hate us and are bent on our destruction? Absolutely. Do they have the means to carry out the destruction of our nation? Absolutely not. Harassment, yes, and sometimes hard body blows, but they simply don't have the material means to conquer or destroy us.

As has been mentioned, the irony is that our fear will do much more to destroy us than actual attacks. If we allow our lives to be poisoned by this fear to the extent that we voluntarily give up the very thing that makes this country worth fighting for, then the "terrists" have won.

 

[.41Dave]

I am appalled by those who agree with the repulsive anti-liberty propaganda of UK Home Secretary John Reid, that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon much of our liberty to the government so they can keep us safe and cozy. Maybe you need to know more about Sec. Reid. At Stirling University he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line. In other words, Reid is a hardened stalinist, with a penchant for personal violence. And this is the kind of guy you want to entrust with the orderly dismantling of your liberty? As for the frightening willingness to flee from liberty because something went bump in the night displayed by the "The constitution is not a suicide pact" line, Bush and his leftist trotskyite neo-conservative regime is no better.

How hard are Benjamin Franklin's words to understand? "Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

If you give up some of your liberties "temporarily" so you can be "safe" because we are "at war", just when do you think you will get them back? The so-called "War on Terror" will never end as long as the government can restrict the liberty of it's citizens and gather power unto itself under it's guise. That's the genius of the WOT, there is no clear enemy to defeat, so it never has to end!

As for:

I do NOT want it written on my tombstone: "Protected the rights of terrorists". We are at war.

Maybe we need to consider one of the truths spoken by Thomas Paine:

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself."

Unfortunately, too many in today's world seem eager to abandon liberty and flee in fear to the bosom of mama government for protection from all the scary bogeymen.

 

[Autolycus]

Damn good post .41Dave. I would buy you a beer if I could.

 

[antsi]

--quote-------
"Protected the rights of terrorists".
--------------

It's not about protecting the rights of terrorists. It's about protecting the rights of everyone else.

If you are concerned about our security vis-a-vis terrorism, you should be ten times more concerned about our security vis-a-vis tyranny. Look at the history of the 20th Century - 100's of millions murdered by their own governments. The magnitude of terrorism is miniscule in comparison.

You are advocating handing over police state powers to the government. Do you really believe that they will employ those powers wisely and justly? When in human history has a government with police state powers ever employed them wisely and justly?