Yes

by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: January 26, 2010

The hasty passing of the Patriot Act in the wake of the attacks of 2001 created much more fear and outrage than a feeling of safety and security among the American people. Yet the American people acquiesced that some civil liberties would have to be sacrificed in order to deal with a previously unacknowledged and new type of threat to Americans on their own soil.  It was the instant acquiescence, not the law, itself, which was the threat to our civil liberties.

Although, since the Oklahoma City bombings, many Americans had foreseen and anticipated a major act of terrorism that would be carried out in America, by either domestic or foreign agencies, few were able to imagine an event that was as catastrophic, well planned, and well coordinated as the 911 attacks. From that point on, there was an instant understanding that virtually every major facility, infrastructure, and transportation asset was vulnerable, giving a general impression of an "invisible", resourceful, and dedicated enemy who walked among us in every area of life. This "invisible" army could be of any race, gender, ethnicity, and occupation. These could have been our classmates, neighbors, teachers, doctors or anyone that we look at.

As a result, the idea of giving up our civil liberties, while a chilling threat to life as we knew it, was a necessary evil. But just as many could foresee the possibilities of catastrophic acts of terror, many could also see the abuses and the gateways to totalitarian rule that a willing population would allow to happen, given the ability to induce fear by simply invoking the horrific spectacles of "911" and implying that it would happen imminently, and could happen anywhere.

The problem was that those who knowingly underwent the abuses of the new found authority were neither large enough in number nor important enough in celebrity to bring the idea home to over 300 million people, most of whom suffered no immediate ill consequences of the reduction in civil liberties. Aside from a controversial number of mistaken entries on "no fly" lists, which included a few congresspeople, and some personal abuses and insults from low level airport security personnel, there were no obvious signs of wide scale imposition of totalitarian rule.

The rumor mill abounded with conspiracy theories of concentration camps, massive and sprawling underground survival bunkers for the national and world elites, and the government being able to pry into our internet, banking and personal lives. There have always been conspiracy theories, especially the ones concerning a thirty year plan by the extreme and right wing elites to build and populate concentration camps, to use the US military to control the population, and to coerce citizens into spying on other citizens, but, aside from some self-enriching abuses of Presidential and congressional authority, there have only been rumors. Now the extreme right wing is using the same conspiracy theories to accuse the extreme left wing of totalitarian politics.

The war on terror continues. The "invisible enemy" is definitely patient at waiting for the best opportunity to create as much devastation as possible. When, not if, the next major assault occurs, the cycle of giving up civil liberties in order to ensure the safety of our huge country and population will begin anew.

As before, the new cycle will come with an understanding that as long as it is "them" and not "us" who are being denied liberties, then denial of liberty will always be an acceptable choice in dealing with the newest and the most unknown of threats.

 As such, it is that mentality of acquiescence that is the threat to our civil liberties, not the actual acts and laws which are written and executed.

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