If we lose our civil liberties

If we lose the civil liberties that we possess in this country I believe we will be no better off than the citizens of the countries which we hope to defend ourselves against. Our civil liberties define us as a great nation and a leader of nations. If the government is able to deny us our right of privacy, search us or spy on us or hold without due process then we have lost the freedoms which our founding fathers have left us as an inheritance.
One of the areas where these rights have been jeopardized by the USA Patriot Act and President Bush's domestic spying program is in the use wire tapping which clearly violates our rights to privacy if conducted on citizens of the United States. This is what I would call a big “if” though. The founding fathers anticipated this type of violation which is why they put safeguards into the law which provides that there be probably cause and a warrant. This is the same sort of safeguards which apply to other acquisition of evidence.
The acquisition of evidence is referred to as search and seizure and there are laws that apply, which protect us from the authorities by providing grounds for reasonable search and seizure. These laws provide us with rights as citizens and in general require law enforcement agents to obtain a search warrant by presenting a case before a magistrate prior to invading our privacy. The big “if” that I referred to previously is a reference to what I consider to be a condition upon which these rights apply and that condition is the citizenship of the individual.
Rights are granted to citizens by the constitution which is based on the authority of the government of the United States over its citizens. In order to extend these rights out over a broader umbrella of human kind it would be necessary to call upon greater authority for implementation which I am sure could be argued, but it is outside the scope of this article. It has been represented to us that our government, as declared by the Bush White House is using the authority of the USA Patriot Act to spy on foreign threats. This is the line, but I don’t know if I am convinced.
Another area that I wouldn’t want to see the rights of the citizens violated is detaining without what is called a “writ of habeas corpus” this has happened in the past during World War II with the incarceration of the Japanese Americans and it was a mistake then and I believe it would be a mistake now.
In the wake of September Eleventh I find myself fearing government more that the radical extremist of the Middle East. George bush defining the attacks as an act of war which created a situation where he had more power than he would have had if he had simple declared it as a national emergency. Since then we have involved ourselves in a war where we probably had no business and we are running up a debt which I can’t even imagine.
In review I believe that it is important to distinguish between civil liberties as applied to citizens of our country and civil liberties as applied to non-citizen enemies of the state. I don’t think it is realistic to conduct our operations overseas under the same policies as our domestic operations; however I also believe that we should adhere to their standards. As they say when in Rome do as the Romans.