War on terrorism terrorizes Bill of Rights

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

Almost sixty years ago my mother stopped by to visit her stepfather at his office in Dallas. But on this day in 1941, he was not at his desk. Kiyo Ando, a graduate of Texas A & M, an electrical engineer who had lived in the U.S. all but six months of his life had been detained, taken into custody by the FBI because of his Japanese heritage.

History has not been kind to the executive order that called for the imprisonment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II. The internment camps created great hardships and terrible indignities for those held there and constituted a flagrant breach of our Constitution. The federal government has since apologized to the survivors and offered twenty thousand dollars to each of them in reparations. My grandfather, who became a U.S. citizen in 1955, did not live to collect.

Today we face challenges similar in some respects to those confronted in 1941. And in meeting today’s challenges, we again have a choice. Will we willingly relinquish our civil liberties and join in the subversion of the Bill of Rights, all in the name of combating terrorism and ensuring domestic security? Or will we awaken to the hazard of permitting too few to possess too much power? (more…)

Saturday, December 1st, 2001