Chapter 102: Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death

This is a chapter from the orginal Brutally Honest that never made the "web edition". It was just thoughts I had on a debate that we had in our Social Stratification class. So, it's not funny and it's not sprinkled with personal anecdotes about roommates or anything. It's kind of just me rambling.

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

Today we had a debate presented to us in class on Civil Liberties and the such. Mostly concerning the Patriot Act of 2001, and how the effects of September 11 have affected our Civil Liberties. How far is too far for the government to take control of our lives? In this I feel that Republicans and Democrats should get along well, but the main flaw is that Republicans believe in getting too involved to persecute people and the Democrats believe in getting too involved to “save” people. What I am trying to say to make sure I didn’t lose anyone is that Democrats fully support aiding its citizens through welfare and Republicans through the Patriot act want to weed out potential terrorist amongst its citizens. So they are still divided in the deeper context. Surface level I think they would get along great! Digression! Digression! Digression! I meant to begin writing about something completely different when I mentioned the debates in class today. So let me collect myself and move forward with what I desired to talk about in this chapter.
It has to do with September 11th and if you find yourself thinking, “What’s going to happen on September 11th?” Then I’m afraid this writing thing has actually made it too long and you as the reader should pick up a history book before continuing. We were talking about September 11th (better known as 9/11) in class today and the speaker asked who still remembered where they were on 9/11. I raised my hand along with everyone else in the classroom. That was almost five years ago and I can still remember everything that happened that morning, and bits and pieces from that afternoon. I was living in Provo at the time, sleeping on my old roommates couch because I had spent the night for some odd reason. Her neighbor came over for a biology book that he had left there the night before and he was knocking on the door. I was out in the living room so I went to open the door for him and he asked if he could go grab the book. I mumbled “yeah sure” as it was really early in the morning. Then he said, “We’re being attacked.” I was confused by his statement and he went on as he couldn’t’ even see me while he looked for his book, “The United States is being attacked.” My first though and first words were, “Yeah right, you’d better come up with something else to keep me awake because I’m going back to bed.” He continued, “I’m not kidding, turn on the news.” My friend didn’t have a television at the time and I told him so. He told me to get dressed and come over to his apartment to see what was going on. So I quickly got dressed, I was a bit panicked by this time as you can imagine. When he had first said that we were being attacked I could barely believe him, America being attacked by terrorist had never crossed my mind. I couldn’t fathom that anyone could actually attack us, and being a naïve 18 year old I couldn’t imagine why they would attack us. I got to his apartment and watched as the first tower of the World Trade Center burned incessantly and the reporter with a voice mixed with a combination of panic and professionalism recounted to those of us who just tuned in what had happened, when it had happened, and what was happening along the east coast. An attack on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and a plane crash in Pennsylvania which was deduced to have been on its way to D.C. intending to crash into the White House. Goose bumps ran up and down my body as I watched live footage of the first building burning, just then, a second plane flew in so fast that I barely realized what was happening and it struck the second building. The footage was almost instantly replayed in slow motion to us viewers what had happened. The plane flew and crashed into the building as though it was simply a toy and the building was almost as liquid as the surface of a lake, and then the explosion almost instantaneously following. They showed several angles in which the crash could be seen. People could be heard in the background screaming as they watched in horror and helplessness. I remember that morning, in that apartment off of 9th in Provo, Utah, sitting there for hours watching the footage play over and over again as though it were simply a scene from a movie. It didn’t seem real; I didn’t want it to be real. After a while I finally peeled myself away from the new footage and walked home where I began to call my family and my friend whose dad lives in New York. I couldn’t get a hold of anyone and that was something I couldn’t take at the moment. I needed to talk to someone. Finally I got through to my friend who sounded as panicked as I felt. I talked to her until I had to go to work. I couldn’t believe that I had to go to work! I worked at a grocery store, a provider of food which is a necessity for everyone, but I couldn’t fathom why anyone would go grocery shopping today. It was difficult for all of us to handle, having to be “professional” with so many thoughts running through our minds. What was going to happen to our country? Our families? Our Freedom? Was this all the terrorist had or was there more to their plan? I remember one customer coming in and smiling at me and asked me how I was doing. I couldn’t think how to respond to her, had she been completely cut off from all forms of communication and not heard what had happened? Had she not wondered why on a Tuesday afternoon the store was so empty? I couldn’t answer her, I didn’t answer her. I just rang up her order and let her leave.
Today in class we watched the CNN video clip of the plane flying into the second building, it was the exact station I had been watching that morning and it was the very same clip that I watched over and over again. During the debate today I had so many thoughts running through my head. The first group presenting played on our emotions by replaying the clip from 9/11. They were attempting to convince us that the infringement on constitutional rights was necessary in order to procure safety. By showing us this video clip and telling us a story of a group of survivors from 9/11 they had me right where they wanted me. I kept thinking safety is better, safety is better. But then I remembered a quote by Thomas Jefferson, “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it”. Certainly he didn’t foresee the attack of September 11th but I think that regardless this is still important. How much is too much? When do we start to give up so many of our liberties that we have completely subjected ourselves to the government? How far will we allow the government to go before we have lost all our rights that the Founding Fathers risked their lives to secure for us? John Stossel of ABC News said, “Patrick Henry did not say, ‘Give me absolute safety or give me death’”.
Then the opposing side of the debate came up to present. They informed us of all the “evils” of the Patriot Act and I have to admit that I zoned out a bit during their presentation. It was a question brought up to them after the two groups had finished and were taking questions from the class that really got me thinking about this. Our teacher asked the group that was saying that the government should not be allowed so much control over our civil liberties if they thought that people’s lives were worth giving in our civil liberties for a little government control and comfort. He mentioned the victims who died in 9/11 and how their 911 calls had been released and in them you could hear them say that it was getting hotter, that they couldn’t breathe. Many were asking if they were going to die and all the operators could do was to tell them to pray. I began to think about it and really, what difference does it make the amount of government involvement? Evil happens, it happens every day; every generation must have its combat with a source of prevailing evil. Every generation has had its large difficulty in this never ending war. And almost every time that it has happened within America the government has tried to take control and has screwed up. From early on we see this with the Salem Witch trials where many innocent women were killed to insure a feeling of safety for those who were not burned at the stake or hanged. Then more recently was the attack on Pearl Harbor, many Japanese Americans were sent to American “Concentration Camps” simply because they were Japanese. Many of those people were in conditions not too far off from the German concentration camps. In this sense we had basically allowed our government to take the position of Nazi leaders. Many Japanese Americans denounced their citizenship due to this.
Then there is the modern day witch trail (which all of these seem to be) of McCarthyism. People were accused of being communist, and then they were tried. A trial in which the only way out was to denounce others as communist. This created an endless cycle of a vicious witch hunt where everyone saw red and no one was safe. Who fought the government then? Just a few people, who weren’t afraid to fight, weren’t afraid to show the American public what was happening to this country. I put an emphasis on afraid because I feel that fear is what is produced in situations like this. Fear from the government and the power we have given them when we have given them the power so that we wouldn’t be afraid. Our own government has taken on Gestapo-like characteristics many times before. They, just as the first group presenting, have played on our emotions time and time again, they say they do it in the name of safety, and to alleviate our fears when in all actuality they simply create another form of fear among us. Not a fear of dying by some terrorist act but a fear that we may become their next suspect.