Here's a great thought. I remember back to the days immediately following September 11, and having discussions with people over this very subject. The thought was always the same: if the terrorists get us to change the way we view our country, they've already won. In many ways, the current dismantling of our liberties can be traced to John Ashcroft, but I'm not convinced that, in the absence of a horrible terrorist attack, he would have behaved any differently. The main problem is that the idea of America, of freedom and justice for all, is not a pragmatic one. It would be far easier to require everyone to have an id card that tracked where they went and conversations they had so that we could quickly identify "trouble-makers" and deal with them accordingly. Terrorism couldn't survive in such an environment. Free speech couldn't either.

The trouble isn't how far down the slope of the repression of civil liberties we slide. The trouble is sliding in the first place. The fact that some Americans would consider torture to be a viable option for people we "don't like" is disturbing. I don't have a problem with a national ID card system, for instance. ID card used to show someone's age are a good thing. That said, using ID cards to track people and to profile them is simply wrong. Libertarians attack the method (ID cards) because they can smell the potential for abuse. The problem, however, is the abuse itself. When we have representatives in the government who believe profiling is good, who believe that internment of citizens was fine and who think that we should be able to revoke someone's citizenship without their say-so, that's a problem. It's un-American.

Sure, such a system is ripe for exploitation. But that's not the point. America isn't about efficiency, or pragmatism: it's about freedom. If problems occur, we can deal with them. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. But now, more than ever, we need to be vigilant about the restrictions our own government is placing upon our liberties. Liberty demands nothing less.