America: Do Not Sacrifice Civil Liberties

CANDY KRUEGER
Florida Times-Union

If citizens would give half the emotional interest to this country\'s politics as they give to animal control laws, we wouldn\'t have been scraping the bottom of the barrel in the last presidential election. We might not be in the fix we are in now.
I have been taking care of myself since I was 18. I don\'t need a self-proclaimed protector or master.

I would be happy if my government simply enforced the immigration laws we already have and would prosecute the criminals, foreign and domestic, in a uniform manner.

I don\'t fear a potential foreign attacker as much as I do the real threat of losing my personal and civil freedoms.

I fear being controlled by a color-coded bureaucracy that can convince intelligent people that plastic and tape will protect them from bullets, missiles and, ultimately, death.

As a child of the Cold War era, I resent the current anxiety and oppressiveness the Bush administration fosters, looming over the citizens of this country in the name of keeping them safe.

What has happened to us! We used to be independent, carefree, hardworking people with a glint in our eye, our hands on our hips with our brave chests out and a fresh wind blowing through our hair.

Don\'t we believe the old saying that a coward dies a thousand deaths? Whatever happened to the nation that revered the idea of a man standing up in a meeting and crying out, \"Give me liberty or give me death\"?

The terrorist attacks were terrible. We will remember passionately for a long time, but our children\'s children will forget as we forgot the Maine, the invasion of Poland and all the other past atrocities.

We can\'t allow our government to dwell on the past or be molded by a knee-jerk mentality, because, as a nation, we will go on.

We don\'t want future citizens to wonder why we sacrificed freedom and independence to gain a safety our bureaucrats cannot ensure even if they had all the armies of the world behind them.

Bad things will always happen. We need strong leaders with sound judgment to see our country through hard times.

War or no war, we can\'t afford to sacrifice our civil liberties for docility and artificial safety now.