Using Our Fears to Curtail Our Liberties :: Free Essays

The danger we face today in this country is not that government officials will make hasty and rash decisions out of fear. It is that they will use a national crisis as an opportunity to make themselves more powerful and less accountable for what they do in regards to our civil liberties and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. They realise that in times of great distress and anxiety the general mass of the population is not going to notice these new policies that they are going to rush through congress and have signed by their president all in the name of the war on terrorism. An increasingly tyrannical tone is pervading through the Bush administration. We have seen it in the Patriot legislation act that was so hastily pushed through Congress with barely a mention anywhere in the papers. We have seen it in the President Bush’s order authorizing military tribunals for those thought to be terrorists or conspirators without traditional due process protections and without a right of appeal to anyone but our great President Bush himself. We have also seen it in new federal policies that permit eavesdropping of confidential communications between attorneys and their client’s privileged phone calls. And we have seen it in new regulations that allow the attorney general to imprison non-citizens indefinitely, even if an immigration judge has ruled that there is no evidence to justify holding them against their will. Currently there are 641 citizens and non-citizens being detained throughout our country, who have not been charged with a crime. These de tainees are being held for nothing more then their nationality. This is reminiscent of what happened to the Japanese in our country during the Second World War. If this current wave of policies is to continue, there will be no stopping the current administration and how far they are willing to go.