The Eloquent Mr. Cheney

"Civil Liberties don't matter if you're dead from a terrorist." - DICK "Tator" Cheney on the extension of the PATRIOT act.

Now, it's been said that freedom requires eternal vigilance. However, how does one balance the freedoms you allow against the freedoms to take away in order to allow freedom in the first place?
Let's bring this back to the beginning. To have 'freedom', you must exist. Okay, not that far. Let us suppose you exist in a world with other people. In order to ensure personal freedoms, we must initially impose on other's freedom - ex: You can't use your freedom to kill me, because that would negatively affect my ability to use my freedom. So we start drawing lines. "You can't purposely limit my freedom to physically act, so long as my actions do not limit other's freedom to physically act." Do unto others..., basically. Then we start taking it further. "You're free to live anywhere you want, but if you want to live within these arbitrary lines, you have to abide by these rules. They may affect your freedom, but we think they will allow more freedom then if we didn't have these rules. And if you don't like them, then get out of our arbitrary lines or accept that we'll really restrict your freedom for breaking the rules."
So, the basic rules become: 1 - You can't limit other's freedom to act. 2 - You can't sabatoge the governing body that decides, implements and enforces the rules.
Okay, so 'terrorism' limits other's freedom to act. One way to ensure that no terrorism occurs is to know and control what everyone is doing at all times. However, not only is that not cost effective, it's also unnecessary because most people have no interest in terrorizing. On top of that, no one would have any freedom, so you're doing more than cutting off the nose to spite the face, you're just cutting off the entire damn head. So we have to draw another line. Certain actions should be known and controlled in order to prevent terrorism. Moreover, terrorism should be defined properly, so that we don't get into the same mess of everyone being watched and controlled. So, let's use the government's apparent definition: acts which instill, or contribute to the instillation of, terror or fear on such a level as to be socially debilitating for a notable segment of the total population. It's vague, but it at least includes 9-11 and excludes a brother being an asshole to his little sister.
So the questions become: which actions need to be known in order to prevent terrorism and how does one become aware of those actions. Enter the PATRIOT act. Sure, we already had FISA - the Foreign Intelligence Agency Act, but hey, according to the Bush regime, we don't have the time to go through the red tape of 'legal surveillence'. But FISA allows for a 72 hour grace period before the surveilleur even needs to start the process of going through proceedure, isn't that enough? Of course not. Our government needs to be able to watch anyone at any time without any oversight or control. So how does the government gain access to that kind of power? The American people wouldn't just hand it over to them, would they? As is the case in very few issues as complex as this, there is a one word answer: FEAR. If the American public is scared, they will give up any and all freedoms just to get rid of that fear. At no point in history since it was first said has this statement been more relevant: There is nothing to fear except fear itself.