By Karen MacNutt,
Contributing Editor

The fears of further massive attacks against Americans, which sent shivers through the country after September 11, 2001, never came to be. Bin Laden's strongholds were overthrown by his Afghan enemies. With the exception of the first attack and the mailing of a handful of anthrax letters, most of what followed was the work of copycats or drones of limited intelligence.

This is not to say we should let our guard down, but it is time to put things in perspective. With no disrespect to those who died, we should remember that the vast majority of targeted people survived. The buildings did not collapse immediately but held together long enough for most people to get out.

The terrorist damage was not as great as our destruction of German cities in World War II or their destruction of London. It was not equal to the Union burning its way through Georgia during our Civil War, nor was it equal to our good allies, the British, burning and sacking Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812. We will, as others before, rebuild. Freedom is not about rebuilding cities.

About 8,000 people died in Galveston, Texas, in its 1900 hurricane. Influenza killed over 500,000 in the U.S. in 1919. In the last two decades of the twentieth century we lost over 400,000 Americans to AIDS. That is 20,000 a year to a disease whose primary means of infection is totally preventable. Each year we kill over 40,000 people on American highways. The loss at the World Trade center is about equal to those who die by drowning each year in the United States.

The truly terrifying aspect of September 11th is that it has showed us just how shallow some people's understanding of freedom is and how quickly society can justify destroying freedom in the name of public safety. Long after the rubble of the World Trade Center has been removed, laws passed in moments of panic will still be on the books. Like some carcinogenic, they will provide the means for malignant abuse of power to eat away at the Republic.

The erosion of privacy, the vast ability of the government to collect information about honest citizens, lays the groundwork for the abuse of that information for political manipulation. Information once gathered, will eventually be used for every purpose, regardless of the law. When the income tax law was passed, citizens were promised that the information they gave for taxes would not be used for any other purpose. That is no longer so. That information will now be "shared" as part of the information law enforcement is gathering on all Americans.

By executive order, the government is now claiming the right to listen in on conversations between a lawyer and her client. This greatly reduces the ability of the lawyer to represent a client. Although profiling has some place in law enforcement, our government is acting against people based on ethnicity without any additional reason to believe there might be wrong-doing. That is not good police work and it is not right. We have expanded the number of businesses that must report your financial transactions to the government. We have increased the time you can be held in jail without being charged to seven days. Remember, there is nothing to prevent you from being picked up a second or third time without being charged.

We are now allowing the government to search our homes without telling us they have been there. They can take your property without telling you until some unspecified time in the future. You will never suspect that the people who broke into your home and ransacked it were the government. You will think you were burglarized. You will not bother to ask authorities for those little items that disappeared such as your best watch or those old love letters which you would be embarrassed to have published. You will not even miss the hair taken from your brush or the DNA they will extract from it. You will not be able to complain that they exceeded their warrant as you will not be present to supervise the search, nor will you have a copy of the warrant.

The amount of information we are allowing the government to gather is truly troubling. They will know what books you buy or borrow from the library. They have access to all your student papers and records from college. They will be able to scan rallies, protests and even street corners to link your face to your "file." They will know what places of business you enter, who you converse with on the telephone, and who you talk to on e-mail. They will search your computer electronically and have access to whatever fantasies or stupid comments you have ever made. They will do this even though there is little or nothing to link you to criminal activity. Once they have the information, they will never destroy it. There is nothing to prevent them from gluing it together and destroying your reputation in McCarthy-like hearings. Are you prepared to answer publicly questions about why you read a disapproved of book linked to a disfavored philosophy? What about that porn site that you accidentally logged onto via the Internet? This is my definition of terror.

All of our Constitution is important. It was not written for times of peace and prosperity. It was written by a generation that had endured civil war. They had seen their legislatures abolished. Those charged with political crimes were sent to special courts far from their homes where they were tried before judges without juries. People were arrested and held without charge for days. Private property was ransacked and confiscated during government sweeps made with general warrants looking for guns and contraband. Troops were brought in to enforce the law. This was all because the people were protesting payment of taxes which they believed had been illegally imposed. Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, Williamsburg and Richmond, Charleston and Savannah were all occupied by an army of mercenaries who closed local schools and turned churches into horse stables. New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas and Georgia were thrown into fratricidal civil war as severe as anything seen in the Balkans. Those who wrote the Constitution knew crisis as we could never imagine it.

Only two rights set out in the Constitution can be set aside in time of war. The right not to have troops quartered in your home (Third Amendment) and the right of Habeas Corpus.

Habeas Corpus is a court order that forces the government to bring you before a court and prove they are holding you in accordance with the law. This great right can not be suspended except in case of rebellion or invasion when the Public Safety requires it. Habeas Corpus protects you from being arrested out of spite and held indefinitely without ever being brought to trial. It is important to freedom.

Reuters Press: Amnesty [International] says Congo violates human rights. Accuses regime of using detention to punish critics...the police and security forces arbitrarily detain and ill-treat ... hundreds of students, political opponents, and journalists . . . those who dare to criticize [the] government. . . . 9 Jan 2002.

Boston Globe: Nearly 1,200 people have been detained so far [by the U.S. Department of Justice], but only 603 remain in custody [55 on federal criminal violation and 548 on immigration violations]. . . An unspecified number are being held on sealed material witness warrants. . . . 28 Nov 2001.

The Constitution states that all crimes are to be tried in courts created by Congress, Art. I, Sec. 8, Art. III, Sec. 1, and 2. During our Revolution, Americans were executed on the orders of British military officers after summary hearings in which charges were made. The accused had no ability to cross-examine his accuser, no ability to have a lawyer, and in some cases, no explanation of the facts upon which the accusations were made. The Constitution was intended to prevent such acts from occurring in the future.

The only court created by the Constitution is the Supreme Court. All other federal courts, including military courts, are the creations of Congress. Congress has full power in this area including the power "To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations." With the exception of slaves, which we no longer have, the Constitution does not say that it limits its application to citizens.

People who commit crimes against America or Americans can be brought to justice in our normal court system. As long as that court system is open and functioning, it has the full capacity to try anyone brought before it.

Crimes committed by soldiers (ours or someone else) in the course of an armed conflict, can be tried in the military court system established by Congress. In times of war, enemy soldiers can be held until the end of hostilities under conditions set out in the Geneva Conventions. If they have conducted themselves in accordance with the laws of war, they are released at the end of the war. If they have violated the laws of war, they can be tried and punished by courts martial.

Military tribunals are more properly used against civilians in areas under martial law, that is an area where the civilian courts are not functioning and where the military courts have no jurisdiction. Such tribunals should be governed by rules similar to those of our established civilian or military courts.

As of this writing two alleged terrorists have been indicted and will stand public trial in our civilian courts. Our civil courts have tried terrorists before with great success. Suggestions by some responsible people that we abandon our court system for those labeled "terrorists" are out of place. It is essential for the world to see that what we do is fair and just.

It has been argued that we should not give terrorists all the rights we give criminals in our court systems. Who is to say who is a terrorist? In our system of government, the courts are the finders of disputed facts. A court should make the determination of whether or not a particular individual is a terrorist. The rules of evidence and the jury system is intended to prevent people with political power from destroying their enemies using the excuse of state security. It is too easy to corrupt public employees by threatening their jobs or offering advancement.

Some argue that non-citizens are not "people" for the purpose of the Constitution and therefore should not have "rights" of citizens. This, they claim, justifies arresting and holding such people without charge. They would have such people tried under lesser standards in special tribunals. Some have even suggested that we should use torture to question terrorists as do the Israelis.

Los Angeles Times: "deSosa is 85 but he remembers his tormentor with photographic clarity. . . Four times, he says, a man known as "El Enfermero"-The Nurse-attached electrodes to deSoso's temples, and 10 times to his genitals. "You feel like an explosion in your head and you lose consciousness," deSosa recalled. When he came to, the Havana newspaper publisher would usually be lying in his own excrement. . . . " 18 Nov 2001.

Washington Post:. Ending decades of stonewalling, the Mexican government acknowledged yesterday that at least 74 officials from 37 government agencies were involved in a campaign of disappearance, torture, and executions of leftists in the 1970s and 1980s. 28 Nov 2001.

Some people die under torture. At least one person has died in U.S. custody as a result of the sweeps of "suspects" after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Coercive questioning is unreliable. Some people will say anything to avoid pain or gain some minor advantage.

The American Constitution is based on two philosophical concepts. Natural law and the social contract. At the time of the American Revolution, most of Europe was governed by absolute monarchs whose word was law. Philosophers, however, proposed that there were laws that governed all men, including kings. Conversely, there were certain rights that all men had. These were not the gifts of kings or governments. These natural rights were God-given.

Our Declaration of Independence is the simplest and most forceful statement of this philosophy. There were no Americans when Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men were created equal and that they were endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.

Life, liberty and property are the most elemental of our natural rights. The duty of government is to protect, not destroy these rights. Most of the rights set out in the Bill of Rights along with some unstated rights, such as the right to travel and the right to privacy, are natural rights that belong to all mankind. Freedom of speech, press and religion are basic rights of mankind. The right of self-defense and to have arms for that purpose is a basic right of mankind. The rights of life and liberty are clearly human rights which should not be denied unless there has been a fair determination of guilt. Our system of laws is designed to insure the human rights of life and liberty are fully protected.

These are the rights of all mankind. They have nothing to do with citizenship. To say that they only belong to citizens is to say that these great rights exist at the convenience of government. That proposition is an assault on the heart of freedom.

The ministry of Christ was to tell the world that God loves all his children. The ministry of America has been to tell the world that in the eyes of God all his children are equal. If we deny anyone a basic right, we are unfaithful to freedom entrusted to us.

The test of our resolve to defend freedom is not measured by the weight of bombs we can drop on foreign soil. It is measured by our commitment to the institutions that define freedom. It is easy to support those institutions in times of peace. The real challenge is our determination to stand by them in times of crisis. If freedom is to endure, we must not let our fears destroy that very thing we wish to defend.