We Can Be Both Safe and Free

If, as John Philpot Curran once said, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, what, then, is the price of security? Contrary to the current administration, we think security and liberty can, and indeed must, coexist.

One year ago tomorrow, the USA PATRIOT Act—a misnomer if there ever was one—breezed through the House and the Senate with an embarrassingly small amount of debate. Cowed by the noxious jingoism of the bill’s supporters, few in Congress investigated its provisions and even fewer raised objections to them. There is no doubt that those were trying times for our nation, but so little discussion was an insult to the traditions of free and open inquiry on which this country has prided itself. The fruits of the bill were rotten long before its inception, and its first year in effect constituted an assault on civil liberties. Coupled with the actions of the Bush administration, the past year has been one of the worst for the exercise of freedoms and liberties in memory. Pillars of the American constitutional framework have been tossed aside or curtailed, all in the name of increased security.

Consider the “preventive detention” of thousands of Muslim, Arab and South Asian immigrants under an alarming cloak of secrecy. It is telling that the government still refuses to give a number for how many people were so detained, and how many stay so. Further, the USA PATRIOT Act allows the attorney general practically unchecked power in the treatment of noncitizens. He need merely proclaim to have “reasonable grounds” to believe “terrorist” activity has taken place to hold non-citizens indefinitely, a far cry from any standard that would be acceptable to a court of law. President Bush’s executive order implementing military tribunals is even more troubling. By identifying someone as an “illegal combatant,” a classification that does not appear in any of the international conventions on the conduct of war, the president asserts the power to hold someone incommunicado and without charges. The order categorically denies federal courts jurisdiction over these tribunals. Moreover, the administration has insisted that the classification of enemy combatants is not subject to review by any court. These procedures make a mockery of an independent judiciary and the separation of powers.

The Bill of Rights, the bulwark of a society committed to ordered liberty, has emerged from the past year tattered. A host of freedoms—freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, due process, access to legal counsel and protection against unwarranted search and seizure—have been the victims of a national leadership that has unflatteringly sought to acquire power at every opportunity.

In wrapping themselves in the flag and crying for increased security, the government exploits the current climate of fear. By accusing its critics of being unconcerned with national security, the government deflects substantive evaluation of its policies. The plea for increased security at any cost is a dangerous one, raising the specter of a constitutional dictatorship. Open debate must be promoted, for in times of supreme emergency, if and when they arise, the mechanisms of deliberative democracy should not be discarded in favor of the unchecked consolidation of executive power. The only way to insure this is to provide an atmosphere of free inquiry. It is, of course, no surprise that there has been so little debate since the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, especially considering Attorney General John Ashcroft’s now infamous dissent-on-dissent: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists.” This is a gravely troubling remark from the chief law enforcement officer in the country, whose job it is to uphold the Constitution. By equating dissent with disloyalty, the administration has tried its hardest to stifle meaningful public discussions on its measures.

The war against terror is no conventional conflict. Without question, we will have to adjust the structure of our society. But as this war of unforeseeable duration continues, it is imperative that we, as vigilant citizens, demand more transparency and accountability from our government. A critical first step is to reexamine the measures hastily enacted in the wake of Sept. 11 and repeal those that are grossly inconsistent with the guarantees of the Constitution. Only a free America can be a secure America.

Dusty Lewis ’04 is a history concentrator in Lowell House. Brian J. Wong ’04 is a physics concentrator in Lowell House. They are officers of the Civil Liberties Union of Harvard.