Freedom of Speech (Provided There Are No Threats)

Anthony Lewis, author of Freedom for the Thought We Hate, makes a judgment that the United States will continue to marginalize free speech every time a threat presents itself. The past examples he uses to support his hypothesis are the Sedition Act of 1786, the Red Scare, and the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II. However, he finds the War on Terrorism different from the threats of the past. Since we have no concrete enemy to surrender, they may very well be no decisive end to this war, and therefore there may be no decisive end to the limits put on our First Amendment rights as a result. Like Lewis, I find it disconcerting that in the event of a threat, First Amendment rights are the first thing to go. We are a country of fear mongers. I believe the terror alerts at the airport illustrate this point. All this hullaballoo about red, orange, and yellow alerts is just a way for the government to convince citizens to surrender our Fourth Amendment rights just as we surrendered out First Amendment rights with the PATRIOT Act. The government and citizens refuse to learn from the past, though, as Lewis points out, we do a really good job of apologizing for our trespasses after the fact. Though there is protest, the majority of citizens view allowing the government to reduce their Constitutional protection as their civic duty during these unstable times. However, I believe that now more than ever, we need to fight to preserve our Constitutional rights. After all, how can we claim to be fighting terrorism to promote liberty abroad when we are reducing liberty at home?