Freedom of speech, civil liberties being taken away

By Francesca Lo Basso
Collegian Editor
October 18, 2006

Everything’s legal until you get caught – this is probably the most valuable sentiment ever passed down to me by my 12th grade government teacher, Mr. Marish. The idea seemed magnanimous, a secret, like I was eavesdropping on something Big Brother didn’t want me to know. But what Mr. Marish forgot to tell me was that the opposite works, too: you can’t do anything if they want to catch you for everything. Those inane little liberties you think you have – like freedom of speech – can be taken away in a flash.

Picture this: I’m at this anti-Bush protest Oct. 5, put on by a peace and justice organization called World Can’t Wait, and I meet this girl. She’s your average girl: 5 foot 5 inches, blonde hair tied in a knot at her neck, early 20s with big sunglasses. I’m busy peeling off a “Drive Out the Bush Regime” sticker and transferring it to my jacket, when she leans over and asks for one of my stickers. She says, “I need something.” She says, “I don’t have a poster or anything.” She says, “I got arrested yesterday – at the Philadelphia Airport.” She got arrested for calling Bush a dirty word.

This is not the only story like this. Tariq Ramadan, a professor at Oxford, was offered a tenured position at Notre Dame University almost three years ago, in early 2004. He has yet to fill the position. According to the Washington Post, his application for a visa has been denied numerous times because the goverment says he endorses terrorism.

Ramadan donated $940 between 1998-2002 to a Palestinian humanitarian aide organization. So what’s the real reason Ramadan is banned from America? Maybe because he is a credible, intellectual figure who has actively and publicly criticized the Iraq War, U.S. policy in the Middle East, the use of torture, secret CIA prisons and other government actions that undermine fundamental civil liberties.

Whether you want to cite the Patriot Act, George W. Bush or Osama bin Laden as the cause, the effect remains clear: our administration is utilizing the American people’s fear of terrorism to manipulate them into losing their rights. On Aug. 17, a federal judge ruled that the Bush Administration’s policy of wiretapping international telephone calls of people in the United States was unconstitutional. She said this was a flat violation of the First and Fourth Amendments, as well as a 1978 law that requires warrants for such monitoring. She wrote, “It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control.” The administration’s response? The laws have to conform to the monitoring, not the other way around.

What is this thing – this Bill of Rights – besides a piece of paper if the government is unwilling to adhere to it? It is supposed to be a document, a record, a tangible piece of proof that people – citizens, humans – have unalienable and indisputable rights. One of those rights is freedom of speech.

But where has that freedom gone? Or maybe a better question is, did it ever exist at all? In Philadelphia, you can’t turn around without some reminder that Benjamin Franklin was here, and in honor of that brilliant thinker, I’m going to leave you with another brilliant. Franklin once said, “They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Franklin, Mr. Marish and this writer think no one should ever have to give up either.

lobassof1@lasalle.edu