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Civil Liberties After 9/11: Alarmism puts Americans' safety at risk.
OpinionJournal.com ^ | Robert H. Bork

Posted on 08/25/2003 12:29:46 PM PDT by Let's Roll

Edited on 04/23/2004 12:05:51 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

Civil Liberties After 9/11 Alarmism puts Americans' safety at risk.

BY ROBERT H. BORK Monday, August 25, 2003 12:01 a.m.

When a nation faces deadly attacks on its citizens at home and abroad, it is only reasonable to expect that its leaders will take appropriate measures to increase security. And since security inevitably means restrictions, it is likewise only reasonable to expect a public debate over the question of how much individual liberty should be sacrificed for how much individual and national safety. That, however, is not the way our national debate has shaped up. From the public outcry over the Bush administration's measures to combat terrorism, one might suppose that America is well on the way to becoming a police state. A full-page newspaper ad by the American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, informs us that the Patriot Act, the administration's major security initiative, goes "far beyond fighting terrorism" and has "allowed government agents to violate our civil liberties--tapping deep into the private lives of innocent Americans."


(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: civiliberties; homelandsecurity; patriotact; robertbork; september12era; terrorism; wot
Did search on original title - didn't find
1 posted on 08/25/2003 12:29:47 PM PDT by Let's Roll
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To: Admin Moderator
I was looking at two stories at once and attributed this one to NRO instead of OpinionJournal.com - could you fix? And take out the bold tags if you can in title - yikes.

Thanks
2 posted on 08/25/2003 12:33:40 PM PDT by Let's Roll (And those that cried Appease! Appease! are hanged by those they tried to please!")
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To: Fred Mertz; sauropod; AAABEST; DoughtyOne
ping - interesting alternative view on this subject
3 posted on 08/25/2003 12:39:34 PM PDT by dirtboy (Press Alt-Ctrl-Del to reset this tagline)
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To: Let's Roll
"The enemy blends into our population...attacks without warning, and consists of men who are quite willing to die in order to kill us and destroy our civilization. Never before has it been possible...to murder tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Americans in a single attack. Those facts justify what the administration has already done, and urgently require more."

It took a while to get to, but I found what I think is Bork's point.

And, I agree~~we should vigilantly protect our rights---but not turn those rights into a suicide pact.

Quite a challenge.

4 posted on 08/25/2003 2:59:49 PM PDT by Right_in_Virginia
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To: Right_in_Virginia
"And since security inevitably means restrictions, it is likewise only reasonable to expect a public debate over the question of how much individual liberty should be sacrificed for how much individual and national safety."

It is precisely because we "sacrificed" individual liberty for "...national safety" that up to 3,000 fellow citizens died on September 11, 2001.

The enemy would not have blended in to our population as plastic knife wielding hijackers if the right of a private airline company to allow their passengers to be armed on their private property was not unconstitutionally denied by our government.

There is no way the terrorist of September 11, 2001 would even attempted to hijack a commercial aircraft if 10, 40, 60 good U.S. citizens would have been armed.

The odds of a successful hijack would have been astronomical.

With the continued threat of terrorism, we citizens should be exerting our right to keep and bear arms, not relinquishing that right even more.

5 posted on 08/25/2003 4:03:36 PM PDT by tahiti
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To: Let's Roll
Re:"The most salient outward sign of this is said to be the ethnic profiling that now occurs routinely in this country, particularly at airports but elsewhere as well--a form of discrimination widely considered to be self-evidently evil.

BZZZzzzzzztttt ! Wrong!

Evil is:
Insinerating inosent people, from more than 80 countries around the world, as they do their morning email, spraying them with exploding jet fuel at more than 1500 degrees. Pulverizing their burned bodies as they're thrown from 80 story windows to a flatening death on New York city pavement, leaving only flecks of skin and hair to be picked over months and months later at fresh kills land fill, THAT IS EVIL, and it was done to thousands of my people.

What's more? It continues to be done to inosent people around the world on a daily basis. If these whack-jobs want something to b*tch about, this is it.

6 posted on 08/25/2003 4:16:51 PM PDT by ChadGore (Kakkate Koi!)
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To: Let's Roll
EVERY FREEPER MUST READ THIS !
7 posted on 08/25/2003 4:29:36 PM PDT by ChadGore (Kakkate Koi!)
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To: Let's Roll
ROBERT H. BORK BUMP !!
8 posted on 08/25/2003 4:40:13 PM PDT by ChadGore (Kakkate Koi!)
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To: tahiti
bttt
9 posted on 08/25/2003 4:41:58 PM PDT by ChadGore (Kakkate Koi!)
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To: dirtboy
A MUST READ!
10 posted on 08/25/2003 4:43:37 PM PDT by ChadGore (Kakkate Koi!)
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To: Let's Roll
Bump fot the morning
11 posted on 08/25/2003 10:22:01 PM PDT by Valin (America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.)
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To: All
^
12 posted on 08/27/2003 12:55:29 PM PDT by jla
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To: Let's Roll
Yes....alarmism.....it's not like Muslims are hijacking jets and flying them into buildings or anything.
13 posted on 08/27/2003 12:59:57 PM PDT by Psycho_Bunny
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