IT AIN'T ME:

Sacrificing civil liberties to fight terror: not without a fight. (Dahlia Lithwick, September 5, 2002, Slate)

In a recent Gallup Poll, 60 percent of Americans said that the president is "about right" in restricting our civil liberties to fight terrorism, and 25 percent say he hasn't gone far enough. Why is the public willing to accept this secrecy and arrogation of power? Well, because we're terrified, for one thing, but also because we have come to believe that increased security usually requires sacrificing civil liberties. While this is true, the converse is not. Giving up civil liberties--any and all of them, indiscriminately--does not necessarily bring security. We will not be safer from terrorism if the government restricts our right to vote. And we are not necessarily safer because the state has done away with the right to judicial review.

Ordinary criminal courts will not suffice to stop the next terror attacks. But random government seizures of constitutionally protected rights won't stop them either. We will simply be afraid of both the terrorists and of our government. Whether we are at peace, at war, or in something as yet unnamed that lies betwixt the two, we must continue to demand a rational, principled accounting of where each of our civil liberties is going and why.

Ms Lithwick, like most all of the commentators on this issue, misses, or intentionally ignores, the key to why we so little care about the loss of "our civil liberties": it's because you and I aren't losing any. There's no sense in which any reasonable person could say that there are "random government seizures of constitutionally protected rights" going on. The seizures are anything but random. They are targeted at a specific minority which very few of us belong to. ask yourself this, other than some possible inconvenience at the airport and the very real possibility that a computer somewhere has a memory bit recording the recent search you made for pictures of Margaret Thatcher dressed as a dominatrix, how has the "sacrifice" of civil liberties affected you? Obviously it hasn't.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 6, 2002 9:40 PM