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A look at the Patriot Act, detering terrorism while not destroying civil liberties |
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The Patriot Act The USA PATRIOT Act, commonly known as the PATRIOT Act, is a controversial Act of Congress that U.S. President. George Walker Bush signed into 3 (Public Law Pub.L. 107-56). The Act increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial and other records; eases restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States; expands the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, particularly those involving foreign individuals and entities; and enhances the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts. The act also expands the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which the USA PATRIOT Act’s expanded law enforcement powers can be applied. We shall examine the Patriot act from both the liberal and conservative position, in hope questioning whether this is the best way to deter further hostilities in the US and the rest of the world. The conservative side would say that the Patriot Act is working, “look has there been any further acts of terrorism since 911”, no. When I first heard of this defense, I tended to agree with this view. Has there been mass arrests? No, with people living in an almost Gestapo like world that they have to be careful what they say around their kids in fear of prosecution. No, there has not, but what has happened is that we have set a precedent that could in the future give rise to men that can trample on our freedoms. Benjamin Franklin is quotes as saying that “A country that gives up a little bit of freedom, for a little bit of security, will have not deserve either.” The founding fathers were careful to put in motion a government that would really be a coming of a new age and a departure from monarchies and insane abuses of power that are ingrain throughout history. I have always admired the American founding fathers, for they had at their disposal huge amounts of power, and dealt with it with grace and humility. I am sure that there were excesses, and for example after the war, after the war George Washington wound up with a huge chunk of land in Virginia. This land is still in his family and monetary value of this property is so huge that it is hard to calculate. The fact is that he dealt with better than Napoleon, who came to power a good fifteen years after the American Revolutionary War was over. George had stepped down after his two terms as precedent, to be an elder statesman. Napoleon would not have stopped till he was a modern pharaoh of the world. He would of gone for godly status next. In college, I have heard of George Washington’s excesses, and even heard it said that his monument, being as phallic; and it being a good representation for him. Now old George supposedly shagged half of Virginia, look like he literally was a great founding father. The professor who told me this view was an exceptional man and had rather unique view of history, which I feel changed me in some way. He had a certain comically down to earth human grass roots emotional view of modern history that I could identify with. Yet, when I first went to Mount Vernon to look at Washington’s estate, I found it rather humble. This was the same house that he had all along, and all he added to the house itself when he found his fortune was two small additions to both sides of the house. In a way it reminded me of Elvis’s Graceland, without the Lisa Marie jet. George was rather simple man, he had his study, in which he wrote daily and for the most part I did not see evidence of this glutton which I heard of in college. The coal magnets of the early 1900’s lived in way more luxury than old George. Where I am going at with all this is reaffirming that the founding fathers were men with good intentions, and they really did believe in this theory of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Napoleon, on the other side of the spectrum could not handle this type of power with grace. He sold himself to the world riding the wave of the revolution, proclaiming freedom and enlightenment yet deep down inside he longed to be one of them, and as soon as the opportunity arose he proclaimed himself king of France, than emperor of Rome, and even married into the royal Hapsburg family. This alienated himself from the revolution and in a way was a catalyst for his downfall, for people realized that under him they would never be free. He would march and march till the whole world was his. One of the reasons that American Revolution succeeded, is that formed a government that was something radically different from what the world has seen before. After the defeat of the British, George knew, that when they wanted to make him king, if he accepted this would make him a hypocrite as far as all the mumbo jumbo Jefferson wrote up about all men being equal. How can you say that all men are created equal, and than proclaim yourself as chosen by God, which a monarch is. Where a European serf can come and become the richest man in the world. This is what the revolution was about, and perhaps the reason that America became the most powerful country in the world is because of this promise of freedom. This is exactly where the likes of Napoleon went wrong. That is why France is France, and the USA is the USA. The red white and blue, the free. It would have been easy for America, after defeating Japan to drop a string of atomic bombs all over Russia and than there would have been no Cold Was. This is exactly what the likes of Patton and Macarthur wanted to. In no way am I trying to undermine what these brave patriotic leaders did, and one could easily argue how these men in there prime helped preserve western civilization as we know it. Yet, its generals like this, that paint history’s darkest pages red the blood of the innocent. These men did their duty in saving the world from Hitler, and now luckily America dismissed these modern Caesars, in favor of a political and non violent solution. We can find out in the future that after all they were right, I don’t know? If at the end of all this the world finds itself in the midst of nuclear holocaust, we may find out that they were right, but we won’t go there right now. In a way I would compare the Patriot Act similar to the nuclear armaments of the 60’s, yet instead of hydrogen bombs we are slowly becoming an Orwellian-Huxley society, that would send shivers down the spine of out founding fathers. I really wonder what Jefferson, Franklin or Adams would say about this modern world. In one hand they want to bar code all of us and tape our every move, and at the other extreme, kids today all over the world are influenced by the senseless violence of Columbine and Virginia Tech. I can’t express how much it scares me that with this information boom, a kid in China or Africa can read about these two unhappy youths and perhaps find inspiration in them. A Frenchman, a Bavarian or an Icelander can be inspired by the likes of Ted Kaczynski, Ted Bundy and hundreds of other idiots. I don’t remember any other time in history where a man would gain fame by killing countless innocent bystanders at the village market. This is definitely a new age that did not exist in the time of the birth of our county. Having grown up in the former country of Yugoslavia, I first hand experienced a fear of the government and the police. I was very surprised that Americans can call their police officers pigs, dog and Nazis. At a very early age, in Yugoslavia you know that the police can arrest you and hold you wherever they want and for how long they want. My uncle spent 15 year in jail for saying something that could have been perceived as anti-Tito and therefore treason. My friends in college found it humorous to say after,” what ca’ya going to do later, aaaaah, ya know climb a click tower and start pecking people off.” I remember that being almost of expression that you were feeling a bit agitated. It is important that America remains a country that such humor can exist. I should be able to write that I’m so pissed that I was going to get an Uzi, and blow my whole class away. I remember saying crazy shit like that all my life. The danger is that kids with a warped sense of humor that say crazy shit could be hunted down like Petrovich going after Raskolikov in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. It was all along you Dan Maltby, admit it. Modern lawyers cringe at Petrovich’s style of police work, he has zero evidence, and yet he lets this guy know that big brother is watching. First hand, I have seen how scary a police interrogation can be. In college, again, I had an experience were a student teacher, or more like a graduate student who was jealous over one of my girlfriends wrote to the police in town that I was the culprit of a crime. They brought me in for questioning and pretty soon I was looking at possible 10 years away. But what the police captain was willing to do, if that because he liked me he would try and get me to get of in maybe 4 years. What to do, what to do? This guy had me believing that I really did the crime that is police business. Luckily, my father threatened to play hared ball with the guy and right away the crooked captain admitted that he had nothing. This is of course a totally different story but, RA that originally made the false statement against me ended up to be the perpetrator of the crime and went away for it. At first you may think that this college story is not relevant to the Patriot Act, but it very much is. The best way to get the people to commit horrendous acts is to make them afraid. Before every war agitators go around and instill hate and fear in the population to get them ready to fight. In the summer of 1990, the year before the bloody war started in Yugoslavia I went to visit my old country with my parents. In Belgrade, where I was originally from, my friends upon learning that I was to go to Croatia to the beach told me that I should not go, I would get beaten up for being a Serb. I was very confused, I did not think of myself of a Serb, but a young American. I could not care less about the economics, politics and business and religious matters in Serbia and Croatia any more than I would about the population of shrimp on the Sea of Azov. Like most other young men, even my friends in Serbia, and my friends in Croatia I was concerned with girls, guitars and good times. That summer in Croatia I had some of the best times in my life, and drank wine and played music with my new Croatian friends. I did not tell them that I was originally from Yugoslavia. I told everyone that I was born in the USA and my learned Yugoslavian from my Bosnian mother. When I was leaving, when they learned that I would be flying out of Belgrade told me top be very careful for the Serbs there would possibly harm me. I have never forgotten this whole scenario, here were men that possible in the next few years would see each other on the battle field. Millions of men like this, who really have nothing dividing them but the color of their uniform, will do the most horrendous crimes to their fellow brother out of unwarranted fear. And if we look at history we see that for the most part the hate that these people have is completely not true, but the masses kill each other for the financial gain of a hidden few, in the name of liberty, family and the pursuit of some perceived enlightenment. That is the greatest fear and problem with a precedent like the Patriot act. The door is open for the abuse of power. Do we need to monitor emails…I don’t know? We certainly need to do everything in our power to prevent another 911, Columbine, or Virginia Tech. I think more can be done with gun control. Having witnesses the horrors of Bosnia, in some towns the only people who survived the war were people that were hunters, and ran off into the woods with their friends and neighbors. In some towns the intellectuals who believed that all this was a bunch of nonsense, were murdered in cold blood. The world thinks that Yugoslavia was torn apart by religious causes, when property and financial gain were really the motivation for the killing. The founding fathers said that it was the responsibility of every municipality and the citizens within that town to form a militia. If you started a militia today, everyone would look at you as a paramilitary nut, and you’d probably be under constant surveillance and arrested. In this article I am not necessarily going to argue that we need to form a militia, I just want to bring to light that is was a duty of ours as per our founding fathers, and it seems so strange right now. Same as it was law a 100 years ago that it was ok to beat your wife, as long as the instrument you used was less than the thickness of the with of your thumb. I guess I see a need for the Patriot act in a time right after 911, and I believe that we need to be vigilant in preventing terrorism. I would question to ask what would the likes of John Lennon say at to all this. I can’t speak for him, but I feel that I can hear him talking when the wind blows and the answer does not sound like more counter insurgency, spying and killing. I would question why 911 really happened? Again this is not the purpose of the essay, but I do find it strange that the very people that blew up the towers were our allies when they were fighting the Russians. This is pure armchair historical detective work, but it seems to me like a drug deal gone bad out of Scarface. We used to do business and now someone was left unhappy. It seems that once the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union collapsed as threat #1, there was no reason for us to continue spending billions to no clear political gain. In travelling throughout Europe after graduating form college in 92’, like many young adventurers I went walk about for a bit. I met two guys form Iraq, to them I was Yugoslavian. It was late at night, and I felt that I being American could compromise my safety. They saw right trough it, but we became friends nevertheless. These were some of the kindest, nicest guys that I had ever met. We spoke about the 1st Gulf War and how people in Iraq hated Americans, for almost every family lost someone during that war. To us Americans that war was almost like a videogame. On TV we saw, thousands of people killed in a very neat almost Nintendo fashion. War however is not neat. To anyone who has lost a friend, parent due to an accident or an illness and has experienced loss, can only imagine what would happen if everyone that you knew had lost someone. There would be so much emotion that there would be this feeling in the air that something had to be done for this injustice. The universe works in such a fashion that every action has an opposite and equal reaction. But we went in to Kuwait to stop the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, and preserve world peace; we are the police force. We were in Kuwait, ASAP. This same police force took five years to stop the killing in Yugoslavia. I’m not knocking it completely; at least we are a police force. Unfortunately, the United Nation proved how inept and weak they really were when thy allowed Serb forces to murder with sub machine gun Bosnian leader’s right in front of the eyes of the Franco-Dutch peace keepers. To keep face, the US entered and stopped the bloodshed, and I am deeply in gratitude for that. The whole episode really showed how the cruel this world is and where out motives lie. We are a police force, but Capitalism at its core is a business, and money comes first. All this business means, that we are not high and holly, and are capable of questionable intentions. But we did go, and once the US stepped in crap like I mentioned did not go down. Perhaps we need reforms within the structure of the UN, with perhaps Russia taking a more active part. There is so much that can be done, that goes along with what the founding fathers intended by life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is our duty to question an act that sounds like an aberration of out Constitutional rights. In the end it may be for the best, but not to question it we could soon find our self burning books. |
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