The drumbeat now begins, as it always does in time of war: We must accept limitations on our liberties. The FBI and CIA should be “unleashed” in the name of national security. Patriotism means uncritical support of whatever actions the President deems appropriate. Arab-Americans, followers of Islam, people with Middle Eastern names or ancestors, should be subject to special scrutiny by the government and their fellow citizens. With liberal members of Congress silent and the Administration promising a war on terrorism lasting “years, not days,” such sentiments are likely to be with us for some time to come.
Of the many lessons of American history, this is among the most basic. Our civil rights and civil liberties–freedom of expression, the right to criticize the government, equality before the law, restraints on the exercise of police powers–are not gifts from the state that can be rescinded when it desires. They are the inheritance of a long history of struggles: by abolitionists for the ability to hold meetings and publish their views in the face of mob violence; by labor leaders for the power to organize unions, picket and distribute literature without fear of arrest; by feminists for the right to disseminate birth-control information without being charged with violating the obscenity laws; and by all those who braved jail and worse to challenge entrenched systems of racial inequality.
The history of freedom in this country is not, as is often thought, the logical working out of ideas immanent in our founding documents or a straight-line trajectory of continual progress. It is a story of countless disagreements and battles in which victories sometimes prove temporary and retrogression often follows progress.
When critics of the original Constitution complained about the absence of a Bill of Rights, the Constitution’s “father,” James Madison, replied that no list of liberties could ever anticipate the ways government might act in the future. “Parchment barriers” to the abuse of authority, he wrote, would be least effective when most needed. Thankfully, the Bill of Rights was eventually adopted. But Madison’s observation was amply borne out at moments of popular hysteria when freedom of expression was trampled in the name of patriotism and national unity.