Let freedom ring

To say that America changed a year ago on Sept. 11, 2001, is pedantic and trite, and merely a repetition of the steady drumbeat of morose hand-wringing that has been filling the commentary pages of America’s newspapers for the last several weeks. But still, America has changed – though perhaps not as much as some would have expected, and perhaps not as permanently as some may believe.

What we must consider, though, if only to do our patriotic duty, is whether the changes Sept. 11 wrought have been for good or ill. Have they truly secured the United States? Or have we instead allowed a moment’s panic to strip us of important freedoms?

I do not believe that there can be any argument that the administration’s international actions in the direct wake of the crisis were anything but exemplary. The nation rallied, and Bush and his cohorts responded to the call, building an international coalition against Al Qaeda’s global infrastructure.

Suspected terrorists were arrested across Europe, governments in the Middle East that had formerly been tolerant of the organization joined the world in condemnation. And U.S. and Allied forces stormed the bin Laden citadel of Afghanistan and crushed the Taliban in a matter of weeks, capturing thousands of terrorist operatives and restoring the foundations of democracy to that war-torn nation.

Sure, we didn’t catch bin Laden, and may have even been duped into letting him escape during a so-called “cease fire,” but such is often the way of things in the confusing art of war. We never caught Hitler at the end of World War II. We never got to Mussolini, either – the Italians took care of that for us. And, of course, we didn’t kill Saddam Hussein at the conclusion of the Gulf War.

But in truth, bringing down the big bad guy is only of extreme importance in movies and comic books – far more important in reality is to cripple his machine, to destroy his infrastructure, to cripple his nation so as to end his threat. And those goals we accomplished with Hitler, with Mussolini, with Hussein and, yes, even with bin Laden.

Al-Qaeda may still exist, but only as a shadow of itself. Our enemies still live, but only as spiteful, embittered, defeated men, discredited and in hiding for, quite likely, the rest of their lives.

But what have been the repercussions of Sept. 11 at home? What have we become, here between two great oceans, with all pretenses of protection from those miles of sea stripped away, and our true vulnerability laid bare?

We have become frightened. We have become panicky. And we have become apt to make that most nefarious, that most evil, that most un-American of exchanges: freedom for security.

The Patriot Act. Homeland Security. Declaring American citizens “enemy combatants.” Are these the harbingers of the coming era? Is this the America in which we will live? If so then America wasn’t changed last Sept. 11, it was killed.

Take the Patriot Act, please. A broad and inscrutable set of laws, which allow the government to tap phones, monitor Internet activity, and force libraries and bookstores to divulge the reading habits of customers to the government, the Patriot Act turns every American into a potential suspect, and the government into a potential watchdog of everything we read or say. This is not right. And it’s extremely dangerous to all our civil liberties.

Securing the right to tap into a citizen’s phone line should be difficult for the government, because it should be something they can only do in the most extreme of circumstances, when they already have a case against the accused. Holding American citizens without charging them is unconstitutional and should not happen.

Yes, there can be temporary rights retractions during times of war, but we are not at war. The president cannot declare war, that power resides only with Congress. And to those who point to the lack of subsequent attacks on America as justification for these acts: how do we know there were any follow up attacks already planned?

Chances are that weakening the civil liberties of American citizens will not prevent foreign powers from doing evil against us. But it can tatter our national spirit, splinter our national soul, sow suspicion of our neighbor, and distrust of our leaders. It can only weaken us, and make us, in the end, even more vulnerable. For the power of America lies in our ideas and ideals, and anything that jeopardizes the free exchange, expansion and consideration of such is just as great a danger to our national character as a madman with a bomb is to our lives.

Sept. 11 was a tragic moment in American history, and the lives lost in Al-Qaeda’s attacks must be commemorated, and remembered. But we do not commemorate them when we use their deaths as justification to exchange our own freedoms for a chimera of security.

To honor their memory, we must protect the nation that they died representing. We must commemorate their loss by holding tighter to American ideals. Ideals which include free speech and free thought, even that which goes against accepted political mores and norms. Ideals that proclaim that freedom itself is the most sacred possession of all.

For these are the ideals our grandfathers died for on beaches of Normandy, the ideals our forefathers gave their lives for on the battlefields of the Revolution. No less an American than Benjamin Franklin said that, “Those who would trade essential liberties for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.”

Many think that patriotism is the act of supporting one’s government. It is not. Blindly supporting the government is not patriotism at all, it is nationalism – a cancerous and destructive political force that caused two world wars.

True patriotism, in America, is not clinging to whatever the government says, but standing beside what the Constitution provides. True patriotism is supporting the freedoms our forefathers gave us through their blood, against any who would oppose our liberties, even if that opposition comes from our own leaders.

So let us honor our fallen countrymen by standing tall as Americans, and as patriots, both against the evil of groups like Al-Qaeda, and the well-intentioned but increasingly dangerous actions of our own government, like the Patriot Act. Let us never give up liberty for security. Let our nation continue to be a beacon to the world, a shining city on a hill. Let freedom ring.