Has the Bush administration properly balanced security and liberty? Let's address this question through two routes.

1. When national security is threatened, any nation is likely to reduce liberty in some way. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. During World War I, Congress restricted freedom of speech, prohibiting any expression "advocating or urging treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance to any law of the United States." During World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt supported the internment of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast.

By historical standards, the Bush administration has acted with considerable restraint and with commendable respect for political liberty. It has not attempted to restrict speech or the democratic process in any way. The much-reviled and poorly understood Patriot Act, at least as administered, has done little to restrict civil liberty as it stood before its enactment. The government has not engaged in large-scale discri...

» Want to continue? Login below:

top  |  print  |  email