Every time there is a threat, credible or otherwise, government officials seem to run to the Bill of Rights to find a clause or a law that needs to be changed or amended. Last week proved to be no different when a sweeping majority in Congress voted to pass the new anti-terrorism bill. It makes me wonder—was there less evil in Abraham Lincoln’s time to make the Constitution more perfect then and full of loopholes today, or is it just the advances in technology?
Technology works both ways for the terrorists and for the government. Even before the new bill was passed, the government had extraordinarily broad powers to wiretap, investigate, detain, deport, and prosecute terrorists.
The problem with our government’s work was not that it did not have enough power; it was that it did not do its work the way it was supposed to. In fact, we pay billions of dollars every year to hundreds of government agencies to keep us safe. How can we expect our government to win a war abroad when it could not protect 5,000 of its citizens? How can our government fail so miserably? It surely was not because they had limited power or money.
Yet again we see the different attempts to limit our freedom in the name of security. Thousands of lives were lost, millions of dollars were wasted, and the anthrax scare keeps us wary of something as simple as opening an envelope. The latest casualty is our Bill of Rights now curtailed by the new anti-terrorism bill. That, too, will prove to be a big mistake—maybe not now, but surely later. Almost every time we have passed a law during times of fear and turmoil, 40 or so years later the Supreme Court has declared it unconstitutional.
In 1917, during World War I, Congress passed the Espionage Act, which permitted a couple of thousand trials and prison sentences; freedom of the press was curtailed (sound familiar?) in what is usually called the Sedition Act.
During World War II, President Roosevelt signed an executive order allowing the army to inter 120,000 people, three-fourths of whom were American citizens of Japanese ancestry.
At the time, the Supreme Court upheld these arrests on the grounds of military necessity. Half a century later, the Supreme Court declared that the incarceration of the Japanese was unconstitutional and awarded reparations to the victims.
The Supreme Court in the late ’60s declared many of the anti-Communist laws of the ’40s and ’50s unconstitutional. In one of these decisions the judges wrote, "It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties—the freedom of association—which makes the defense of the nation worthwhile."
Ben Franklin once said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." What would he say of us today?
