A step in the wrong direction

Do our government officials doubt that our founding fathers wrote the constitution in such a way that enabled it to endure conflict as well as to maintain order during peacetime? Steps taken by the Bush administration in reaction to the events of Sept. 11, 2001 not only directly defy the Bill of Rights, but also contradict and undermine the tenets of democracy itself.

One of the most prominent, dangerous and self-defeating retaliations of the US government is ironically called the USA Patriot Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act"). Far from living up to its noble name, the Patriot Act blatantly denies the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The First Amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The Patriot Act, however, redefines "domestic terrorism" in a way that threatens organizations engaging in civil disobedience, so that peaceful organizations like Greenpeace and Operation Rescue are suddenly categorized as "terrorist organizations."

The act essentially declares civil disobedience itself illegal, thereby prohibiting the right to free speech and the right to petition the government when that free speech or petition contradicts the wishes or opinions of the administration (as petitions, by nature, do). This type of censorship by the US Government too closely resembles that of Communist Regimes; our government acts in a frighteningly hypocritical manner by denouncing Communism while passing laws so restrictive as to withhold the civil rights of the American people.

The USA Patriot Act, besides broadening the definition of civil disobedience to the point of infringing on free speech, allows for the detention and deportation of individuals who provide assistance to groups not designated as terrorist organizations. This creates a serious risk that innocent individuals could be deported for innocent association with political groups that our government later chooses to regard as "terrorist organizations."

So the Patriot Act not only compromises the rights of US citizens, but severely punishes non-citizens by making it possible for them to be detained without evidence of their association with a crime. The new law allows for the detention of a non-citizen based solely on the Attorney General's certification that he has "reasonable grounds to believe" that the non-citizen endangers national security. Our policies should be reexamined when the power of our Attorney General is reminiscent of the power of organizations so corrupt as the CHEKA in the former Soviet Union.

The Patriot Act also directly endangers students and violates their right to privacy. According to the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, over 200 colleges and universities have disclosed private student information to the FBI, INS, and other law enforcement agencies since Sept. 11, 2001. The USA Patriot Act has nullified the 1974 Family Education Rights and Privacy Act that prohibited the disclosure of student records without student consent. The USA Patriot Act grants the US Attorney General the jurisdiction to collect personal information (including name, address, visa classification, academic status, disciplinary action or criminal involvement) about foreign students who are studying in the US.

The Patriot Act becomes especially startling when viewed against the background of past wartime violations of the Constitution. The United States Government has an alarming history of threatening privacy and free speech/association in times of war; the Bush administration, rather than learning from the mistakes of its predecessors, has acted accordingly with the Wilson Administration during World War I and the Roosevelt Administration during World War II.

The following examples are but a few of the many instances where the US Government has overstepped its Constitutional boundaries:

Civil War: Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus; innocent people wrongly imprisoned and held with no opportunity for trial.

World War I: Wilson Administration organizes "American Protective League:" 250,000 citizens opening letters, tapping phones, and raiding German newspapers resulted in mob violence and lynching. Congress passes legislation declaring criticism of the war effort (and particularly of the draft) a federal crime

Vietnam War: the CIA and the National Security Agency, as part of Operation CHAOS, spy on American citizens opposed to the war (including student activists)

World War II: 120,000 Japanese Americans placed in "Concentration Camps" purely because of the ethnicity. (Not one Japanese American ever indicted or convicted for any crime against the United States)

Evidence proves that no violation of the Constitution for the sake of promoting wartime efforts has actually helped the US to win a war. Each violation, however, has given the American people reason to doubt the sincerity of their "democratic" government, which, falsely it seems, prides itself on the preservation of civil rights.

What is the difference between law and force? Pericles had a hard time answering this question when facing the Peloponnesian War, and the United States is having a hard time answering it now. Our forefathers struggled with the problem of preserving individual rights while still providing for the common good, and their grappling led to the composition of the United States Constitution. We must encourage our current leaders to trust more wholly in that Constitution, (particularly in the Bill of Rights), in order for our country to live up to its set ideals when those ideals are challenged in times of war.



Jennifer Cantelmi is a freshman and a member of the Tufts chapter of the ACLU.