Con: Nation’s principles subverted by laws

The basis of the American justice system is the assumption of innocence, but fear has overwhelmed the minds of many who would trade their freedoms for security.

For 10 years, the image of the two planes crashing into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and watching them collapse, burying almost 3,000 people has haunted Americans and defined a generation.

Furthermore, the killers are different than us. They come from another part of the world, they dress differently and pray to another god.

That can be a scary thought, one of vulnerability and powerlessness.

But these are reasons to stand behind the founding principles of this country, not to circumvent or blatantly ignore them.

Written less than a month after the Sept. 11 attacks with a title to scare dissenters, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT) Act of 2001 passed both chambers of Congress with ease.

The Patriot Act, signed by President George W. Bush on Oct. 26, 2001, gave the federal government the right to suspend the Bill of Rights.

Although the original proposal was scheduled to end in 2005, Bush approved a Congressional reauthorization bill in March 2006.

President Barack Obama also signed an extension of the bill this May allowing for roving wiretaps, searches of business records and the investigation of individuals without a connection to a known terrorist organization.

These provisions, allegedly to keep Americans safer, are not exclusive to foreign combatants; they can be applied to citizens.

Presidents Bush and Obama, however, are not the first to fight international enemies by limiting the freedoms of their own.

After World War II, fears of the spread of communism and dictatorships drove President Harry Truman and Sen. Joseph McCarthy to wage war on Americans' ideologies. If someone disagreed with the company line, they were labeled un-American and blacklisted.

Twenty years later, the FBI sent agent provocateurs — undercover officers who intentionally entice someone to commit an illegal act — to California to disrupt the Black Panther Party and Chicano movement at UCLA.

Today, the enemy is another group of brown people with a different perspective than the lawmakers and anyone going against the status quo, even lawful U.S. citizens, can be refused an attorney following arrest, imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay and subjected to torture.

Since Sept. 11, the illusion of increased national security is promoted by extra security measures at airports and the elongated waiting times in those lines.

Procedures on record, however, continue to remove the promises made to every American since the country's founders declared independence from their tyrannical English rulers.

The freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights and endless ideological wars waged by the federal government are conflicting interests, as they should be.

But self-expression and due process are pillars on which American policy should proudly stand, not avoid.