America Please Wake Up Your Rights Are Being Destroyed
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The Patriot Act was passed immediately after the September 11th terrorist attacks in the name of providing better security. At the same time this unpatriotic act has essentially annihilated the Bill of Rights. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who trade liberty for security deserve neither” and with the Patriot Act we essentially have neither. This essay will discuss specifically which liberties the Patriot Act has dissolved and whether we should trade liberty for security. First, we shall look at how the Patriot Act violates the constitution.
The Patriot Act violates most of the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment is violated since you could be investigated by the government for simply mentioning something along the lines of terrorism in your e-mails, phone calls, or in a conversation at the airport. Also, what is uncommonly known about the Patriot Act is that if you are being investigated as a potential terrorist you may not tell anyone, even a your family or lawyer. If you do tell someone you are being questioned, investigated, or accused of being associated with a terrorist group you will be automatically imprisoned. This brings us to the Fourth Amendment. The fourth amendment is violated since the Patriot Act allows the federal government to wiretap your phones, read your e-mails, and do “sneak and peek” searches in your homes without a warrant. The Fifth Amendment is also violated since the Patriot Act dissolves due process of law and allows the indefinite detention of anyone who may (or may not) be involved with a terrorist organization. The Eighth Amendment holds no bearing with the Patriot Act in place due to the fact that the use of torture is authorized to obtain information. There are arguments made that the Patriot Act violates a few other amendments such as the second, tenth and fourteenth, but this essay has already covered how the Patriot Act has eviscerated much of the Bill of Rights. Every American should be appalled and angry that we have a Congress that perpetually renews this degradation of rights.
The Patriot Act violates so many civil liberties yet the American people are overall extremely complacent. They seemingly trust their leaders to do the right thing and that if “you do nothing wrong you have nothing to hide”. However, the language within the Patriot Act vaguely defines a terrorist. In other words, a terrorist today is considered someone who is affiliated with Al-Qaeda but the terrorist tomorrow could be the anti-war activist, the socialist, the libertarian, the anarchist, the gun-owner, or anyone else that does not play into the Republican and Democrat political circus. In fact, during the Civil War and World War I anti-war activists were rounded up en masse and this was without a Patriot Act! Of course anti-war activists have also been rounded up the government during the more current wars as well. Furthermore, our elected leaders today may not be the same in the future. In other words, we could have a Congress that surrenders all of their powers to the executive branch and the executive branch decides to imprison people who do not subscribe to their political thought. The Congress has already given up most of power especially the war powers. The sixty day rule of reporting to Congress “the nature of a military act” (War Powers Resolution) on the bombing of Libya has passed yet the Obama administration does not feel it needs to report anything to Congress. The American people need to wake up quickly in order to preserve their liberties and to do that, we must also protest to end of these pointless wars. While we are at war the government has destroyed our civil liberties. I believe as anti-war activist (during WWI) Randolph Bourne once said, “War is the health of the state”. I agree with Benjamin Franklin’s quote. If you trade liberty for security you deserve or will have neither.
Since, September 11th, 2001 we have traded liberty for security time and time again. The Patriot Act itself has been exhaustively covered (now and in a previous essay) so we should look at the other facets of trading liberty for security. First, when an individual goes to the airport they are essentially guilty until proven innocent by the Transportation Security Administration. An individual is forced to go through the body scanners where a TSA agent views a naked x-ray of the individual’s body. If the individual refuses to get blasted with radiation by going through the body scanner they are forced to go through a very invasive pat-down. Here is a classic example of government in charge of providing security, yet people are less safe by being exposed to radiation from an x-ray machine and are essentially being molested by government agents. Government officials are also going after raw milk producers. This includes the small family farmers and, believe it or not, the Amish.[1] There are countless examples of public health officials forcing producers of raw milk to pour out all of their milk onto the ground because the government believes drinking raw milk is harmful to an individual. Of course, the government does not look into the fact there is substantial evidence that raw milk is healthier than the store brand pasteurized milk but rather that going after innocent farmers and the Amish is a great way to generate revenue through fines. Furthermore, if anyone does not want to drink raw milk than they simply do not buy it.
The Patriot Act has destroyed the Constitution and needs to be completely repealed. The government does not need to protect us from raw milk and destroy these farmers and the Amish’s financial security and liberty to produce raw milk. Once the legal precedent is set for the government to intervene in any part of our lives, the government will intervene in every part of our lives. The line must be drawn to keep government out of every part of our personal lives, as long as what we are doing is not harming anyone else. The American people should stop this madness.
[1] Carolynn Lochhead,”FDA’s War on Raw Milk”. The San Francisco Chronicle. May 21, 2011, Retrieved from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2011/05/22/MNVN1JH966.DTL
