Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!

Let me preface this by stating that I am fairly "left" leaning. However, I recently heard a great argument.

It goes as follows.

Here -- are pictures of hurricane Ike, and the recent train crash in LA. 

Now, both of these calamities occurred simply due to bad luck. A hurricane (which, I suppose one could blame on global warming heating the oceans, making stronger hurricanes, fine, but thats still a stretch), and someone texting while driving a train. Both were tragic, and claimed lives, and caused a vast amount of damage. The nation was sad for a few days (in the case of the LA train), while hurricane Ike is long forgotten.  Now look at those pictures... and imagine if I had told you those were terrorist attacks. All of a sudden the situation changes. If that kind of calamity happened here in the US... a quazi breakdown of the constiution (which already has been weakened since 9/11), and broad authority towards the police systems and military would be granted. Habius Corpus was already taken away under the bush administration... can you imagine what would happen in the name of national security after another terrorist attack?

And here is the point. If there was a terrorist attack in the United States when our founding fathers were still around, it would STRENGTHEN their resolve to keep the rights of the citizens. Obviously some common sense safety procedures can be put in place... like making sure people don't have guns on airplanes. Ok, that makes sense. Or making sources of U 235, plutonium, other highly radioactive metals hard to obtain. We don't want anyone getting their hands on weapons grade material. Yes. But to take away the FREEDOM of american citizens, and remove their rights is about the most unamerican thing I can think of. 

When Britain was experiencing terrorism in the 1970's and 1980's (especially in Ireland), they didn't rip up their "constitution" (I say so with quotes because they don't have a document document, but a bunch of laws that make up the majority of -- just never mind), they held the rights of their citizens in a higher light. 

The "illusion" of security is one of the silliest, yet dangerous, forces in the United States at the moment. Every year 40,000 people die in car accidents. We don't have a "war on cars". We don't invade GM and Ford. We understand that shit happens, but we really can't do anything about it except to discourage drunk driving, and improve auto safety. You cannot AVOID a car accident if you drive all the time. Sometimes shit happens. And America accepts that even faced with the daunting evidence that 40,000 die every year. Yet, almost 4000 American's died on 9/11. Tragic. Horrible. I'm not diminishing the horror of it... yet while the death of 40,000 Americans in cars causes not so much as a blink... the death of 4000 allows for wiretapping US citizens, no habius corpus, broad executive powers, 2 trillion dollars in security spending... ect. ect... What would happen if we spent 2 trillion in making a safer car? We'd save a lot more lives. 

So. There is a clear choice. The great phrase comes to mind... which is Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death. Famous words. And they make a LOT of sense here today. I'd rather have my risk of death increase by .000001% than have my rights taken away. Safety is an illusion, rights are not. Keep that in mind, and next time a calamity occurs, because everyone knows that one day it will... i hope that we understand what is really important in this world.

Thanks,

Guthrie