Did the founding fathers intend to protect us from terrorists at all costs?

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."(1) - Benjamin Franklin

In The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine asserts that "a Nation has at all times an inherent indefeasible right to abolish any form of government it finds inconvenient, and establish such as accords with its interest, disposition, and happiness." He saw the American Revolution as the first true revolution, a revolution in the very "principle and construction" of government.(2) He foretold that this revolution would sweep humanity along "on a system of universal peace [based] on the indefeasible hereditary Rights of Man."(3) Perhaps Paine was being a little too optimistic.

The America of today is a far cry from being that shining beacon of liberty and freedom to the world. Instead, we have become the very oppressors we once sought to liberate ourselves from. It is believed that we now have over 1000 military bases worldwide(4) as well as 6000 placed in US territories(5), and "well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations."(6)

The very idea that we should be willing to sacrifice any of our hard-won civil liberties "temporarily" for the sake of homeland security until the terrorist threat has been defeated is unthinkable. First let us examine the concept of 'temporarily'. When and how is the terrorist threat going to be decisively eliminated? Is there, as we first thought during the aftermath of 9/11, a single enemy that we can point out, hunt down, and destroy? I believe that we are still looking for Osama bin Laden, the first such chosen culprit. We have removed former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power and watched him beheaded, but what has that changed?

The war on terror is like the war on drugs; a never-ending battle against a faceless enemy which is sure to win popular support and permissive funding. It feeds on the fears and insecurities of an uninformed public to advance the power and influence of the executive branch and its corporate interests. The powerful have always been quick to take advantage of such. Adolph Hitler knew that the "efficiency of the truly national leader consists primarily in preventing the division of the attention of a people, and always in concentrating it on a single enemy."(7) Our current administration learned

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