Posted on 06/11/2002 6:39:05 AM PDT by Boonie Rat
Poll: Four in Five Americans Would Give Up Some Freedom for More Security
By Jennifer L. Brown Associated Press Writer
Published: Jun 11, 2002
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Four in five Americans would give up some freedoms to gain security and four in 10 worry terrorists will harm them or their family, a new Gallup poll shows.
About one-third of those polled favor making it easier for authorities to access private e-mail and telephone conversations. More than 70 percent are in favor of requiring U.S. citizens to carry identification cards with fingerprints, and 77 percent believe all Americans should have smallpox vaccinations.
"It was amazing the percentage of people who are willing to give up freedom to get back some sense of personal security," said Elaine Christiansen, senior research director for The Gallup Organization. "These aren't people who were necessarily near the twin towers, near the Pentagon, near the Murrah building. These are average people."
The telephone survey, conducted in March, included 934 people across the country. Researchers also polled about 500 people in each of three cities where terrorist attacks occurred - New York City, Washington, D.C., and Oklahoma City - to compare results with the general population survey.
The poll showed 8 percent of Americans are very worried and 31 percent are somewhat worried that they or someone in their family will become victims of a terrorist attack in the United States. In New York City, the level of worry is higher - 19 percent said they are very worried and 34 percent said they are somewhat worried.
Washington, D.C, and Oklahoma City reported levels of fear close to the national average.
Scientists involved in the poll said they were not surprised many Americans remain fearful after Sept. 11.
"The magnitude of the event was just so profound," said Carol North, a psychiatry professor at Washington University in St. Louis, who said talk of the war in Afghanistan, airline security and terrorist threats is propelling the fear.
The study was co-sponsored by The University of Oklahoma psychiatry department through a grant from the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. The main survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, while the margin of error for the survey in the three cities is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Meanwhile, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that 60 percent of New York City residents think the threat of a terrorist attack in their city is greater than it is in any other big city.
Barely 40 percent of respondents believe the city is safer than it had been four years ago, a decrease of 20 percent from those polled in August. Even so, nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said that given a choice, they would prefer to be living in the city four years from now than any other place.
The poll, conducted by telephone in English or Spanish June 4 through Sunday, surveyed 940 adults. It has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
ANY, ANY human being that loses First, Second, Sixth or any other Amendment Rights has lost chunks of freedom.
Those Freedoms get swept away for anyone, they're compromised for us all.
The feds can imprison, without trial, as they chose, we're all in a world of hurt.
Let the government set an example of "sacrifice", by giving up enough pork and perks to pay for some worthwhile security measures (as opposed to the old wish-list items that get dusted off at every crisis).
For instance, we must profile any middle eastern or arab looking males between the ages of 16 to 50 who use any for of mass transit, be it air, bus or train travel. This simple measure would provide more safety than any of the ridiculous steps taken so far.
From their webpage: (my italics)
While we have a special obligation to first responders, we are prepared to engage in any activities that will help us fulfill our mandate. We are currently funded by a special Congressional appropriation that directs us to conduct "research into the social and political causes and effects of terrorism and the development of technologies to counter biological, nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction as well as cyberterrorism..."
Presumably "engage in any activities" would include conducting loaded polls to try and show public support for the advancement of anti-terrorism measures in spite of any loss of freedom or potential for abuse that might be involved.
The key questions that arise are, naturally, what are essential, and what is temporary.
In general, I think that all liberties be considered essential unless the argument against is compelling and the reasons for such a sacrifice is equally so.
For example, I think that the freedom to get on a plane without being searched is a liberty that has been shown by compelling evidence to be non-essential, and the need for such searches to be equally compelling, so I do not mind giving up that freedom.
If that is what the question was getting at, then I agree with it. If the question was asking if I would agree to surrender my fourth amendment privileges for a temporary bit of security, then I would answer no.
Not at all. I just don't like stupidity and there seems to be an over abundance of it on this thread, by FReepers who clearly have a problem with the federal government protecting them from terrorist acts.
Btw, whats your problem?
Your lack of civility is an insult to the fine man of your screen name.
You should get along well with the infamous Kevin Curry, he's known internationally as one of the boors of Free Republic.
Some of it does. The provision allowing "sneak and peek" searches and seizures does not. Because it does not have a sunset clause it is a troubling provision, in my opinion.
The 4th Amendment requires that searches under warrant be specific and reasonable. The problem is, if the government secretly conducts a search of a citizen's home and may indefinitely delay informing the citizen of the search, the citizen will be hard-pressed to ever successfully challenge the search for being unreasonable or nonspecific. If the only witnesses who are present when the search is fresh are government witnesses, unscrupulous government agents (and there are some) are pretty much free to do as they please--and will be more greatly tempted to do so if they know they cannot be effectively challenged in their actions.
If a search cannot be challenged effectively, the 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures is, for all intents and purposes, null and void as to that search.
This is one criticism of the PATRIOT Act that is warranted, I believe.
And, their 'mandate'?
First, and foremost - to secure funding;
i.e.: the uninterrupted flow of federal tax dollars with no strings attached, and no accountability.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt, 1783
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
-- Noah Webster
“Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
-- Benjamin Franklin
"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
-- Ayn Rand (“The Nature of Government”)
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."
-- Ayn Rand, (“Atlas Shrugged”)
“It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.”
-- Henry L. Mencken, 1926
“Thus the State turns every contingency into a resource for accumulating power in itself, always at the expense of social power; and with this it develops a habit of acquiescence in the people. New generations appear, each temperamentally adjusted – or as I believe our American glossary now has it, ‘conditioned’ - to new increments of State power, and they tend to take the process of continuous accumulation as quite in order. All the State's institutional voices unite in confirming this tendency; they unite in exhibiting the progressive conversion of social power into State power as something not only quite in order, but even as wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
-- A.J. Nock, (Our Enemy the State), 1935
“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
-- Edmund Burke, 1784
"There is none more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free!"
-- Johann W. von Goethe
Regards
J.R.
What a dipwad.
Most any question can be written to encourage people to support almost any point of view.
Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, and Chileans as well? Or does this just apply to North America 'Americans'? These restrictions are not welcomed by this North Carolinian. It is one step closer to a secret police that only sheep will enjoy
In no way do I aspire to be a libertarian or an anarchist, but I am intament with the principles of natural law upon which this nation was founded. I have no intent to challenge God and His principles of liberty. Obviously, you think your wiser than this.
What freedoms at airports have you lost?
And what other freedoms have you lost?
>>>The feds can imprison, without trial, as they chose, we're all in a world of hurt.
If you aren't a terrorist, wishing to harm America and kill American's, you've got nothing to worry about. Go about your life and stop being paranoid and scared of your own shadow.
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