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Originally Posted by pgardn
The basic theme to this entire arguement is an old one. It really is about protecting individual rights and at the same time not infringing on the rights and safety of the public as a whole.
Difficult situations like terrorists who basically play on the freedom granted by this country make the above a terribly difficult problem.
I am happy there are people on both sides of the arguement debating this. But it is very interesting how the public is so fickle. Directly after 9/11, you had very little opposition to gtmo prisons or people being held improperly, people searched improperly, etc... Some of these individual horror stories of innocent people being held without due process or any other constituitional guarantee that are citizens of this country is troubling. But the cry does not really start until other events start going a bit sour. Bush was given carte blanche to erradicate threats and make this country safe. Some people saw way ahead of time what this would mean. Most did not complain until well after said event. I find this the most interesting part of the whole debate. The swaying that is shown very clearly in public opinion polls.
So clearly one of the problems this country faces, any democracy faces, is the public overreacting one way or another directly after an event. The event plays out over time, and the arguement that people make change. Very fickle country. It seems whomever or whatever is doing well in the polls is equated with doing the right thing. Now people are questioning so many more things than they ever would have if events had played out differently.
What suprises me is how little discussion there is on Afghanistan. Considered a just war by Europe and almost all Americans. We have won that war also but we are losing the political battle there. So as expected, many NATO allies are now questioning the whole idea in the first place, completely ignoring why we went in.
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Most of the complaining about civil liberties is done for purely partisan reasons. I would say that 90% of the people complaining would not be complaining if the President was a democrat. By the same token, if a democrat was President, you would have a ton of republicans screaming that our civil liberties are being taken away. This is just your usual partisan nonsense.
The truth of the matter is that the government has no choice. If they catch some terrorist overseas and they confiscate his cell phone and computer and discover he has been in contact with people over here, our government has to investigate these people immediately. They can't take their time and hope to stumble upon something. They have to investigate these people vigorously. This may involve wiretaps and it may involve arresting these people before the investigation is complete. They don't have a choice. Would it be better to let them blow up a building first? I don't think so. By the way, I don't think the Constitution defined "probable cause". It talks about probable cause but I don't think it actually defines it. With the Patriot Act, they still have to have probable cause but the burden is not as high as it was in the past. Just because the burden is not as high, that does not mean that the Constitution has been violated in any way.