It has been ten years since terrorists armed themselves with jetliners and attacked the United States; ten years since we have been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. As I have thought back on that day and listened to the remembrances and tributes, I have felt a profound sense of sorrow for the people lost on that day, for the survivors, for the folks who have suffered and have been lost since. I've been moved by the memorials and, in both in the privacy of my own home and here, I honor them all. I honor the strength our nation displayed in coming together on that fateful day to go forward into an uncertain future.
I have also reflected on the injuries our nation and our fundamental values suffered in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The terrorist attacks of ten years ago altered us in ways that will take even more strength and courage to repair. We must remember the self-inflicted wounds we wrought on our core constitutional values in the wake of the terrorist attacks in order to completely undo what the terrorists triggered.
Within five weeks of 9/11, in head-turning speed and with none of the typical deliberation devoted to other legislation, Congress passed the 342 page Patriot Act. Under the Patriot Act, searches of homes could be made without prior notification of the home-owner. The government could delay notifying the home owner for a "reasonable period" that a search had occurred. Government agents could obtain credit card and bank account information including account numbers and information about computer usage such as network addresses, records of computer usage times and sessions all without a court order. The government could also get and in fact succeeded in getting private internet service providers to hand over all "non-content" information, again all without a court order. Racial profiling became a reasonable method of "investigating" individuals for any possible connection to anything deemed suspicious.
All of these Patriot Act measures turned our traditional, fundamental core values inside out. Our right to privacy springs from our constitutional guarantee to be free from government intrusion. The right to privacy is not an abstract idea. The right to privacy is central to our individual and collective humanity. It is what American democracy is all about. Democracy values human dignity and it does so by providing safeguards that protect our privacy. Democracy, liberty and privacy all go hand in hand. We cannot insure liberty without safeguarding privacy. As Thomas Jefferson said, "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance." That vigilance was first and foremost directed at government efforts, schemes, and laws to erode our civil rights. In the aftermath of 9/11, and perhaps blinded by the need for revenge, we allowed our right to privacy be sacrificed in the headlong rush to seek and destroy any and all terrorists, actual or chimerical.
What may come as a surprise, however, is that it wasn't the first time we carved a hole in our Constitution. Our history reveals that in time of war or its aftermath, we allow our political and judicial institutions to take our civil rights for granted. It happened after World War I when the government conducted the infamous Palmer Raids where it rounded up anyone remotely suspected of being Bolsheviks. During World War II, the government forcibly interred Japanese Americans, many of who had sons honorably serving in the American military. McCarthyism grew out of the same focused assault on civil liberties. Is there any doubt that Arizona's assault on immigrants is any less an outgrowth of 9/11 and governmental assaults on America's core guarantee of privacy and liberty from government intrusion? The Patriot Act had its ancestors but it also has its descendants.
The question is where does our democracy go from here, ten years and counting after the horrible attacks? Once freedoms and civil liberties are given up, they are not easily recaptured. The way forward is to return to our core values and strength--our Constitution. If we don't, the terrorists will have accomplished their mission. They will have altered our civil liberties and shut down our institutions. We owe the victims of 9/11and ourselves more than that.
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