Instead of trying to say my own thing about the significance of today’s date, I’m going to let the LP have their say here:
As the nation commemorates the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Libertarians are urging the government to pay tribute to them by restoring the full constitutional rights that Americans enjoyed before that tragic event.
“September 11 is a day for Americans to proclaim, ‘We will never surrender,’ ” said Steve Dasbach, Libertarian Party executive director. “We will never surrender to the terrorists who threaten our safety, nor will we surrender our fundamental liberties to the government.”
On the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that claimed nearly 3,000 lives, Americans are reliving the shock and brutality of the event, sharing in the anguish of the victims and struggling to come to grips with the “day that changed everything.”
And as the nation participates in various displays of patriotism, Libertarians are urging the government to restore the freedoms that were taken away in the aftermath of the attacks so Americans can reclaim the liberty that is their birthright.
“In the trauma following the 9/11 attacks, an anxious public was clamoring for politicians to ‘do something,’ ” said Dasbach. “Unfortunately, they did the wrong thing, by passing laws restricting the freedom of innocent people.”
Just six weeks after the event, Congress passed the Patriot Act, which expands the government’s power to tap phones, monitor the Internet, conduct ’sneak-and-peak’ searches and even gives the FBI power to force librarians and bookstores to reveal the names of customers.
And that was just the beginning of a misguided government power grab, Dasbach said.
“President Bush now asserts that he has the power to proclaim – without showing evidence – that American citizens are ‘enemy combatants,’ and then to order them jailed indefinitely without charges, without access to a lawyer and without the right to appeal.
“Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to a Wall Street Journal article, plans to set up camps for more such enemy combatants who will be jailed without charges, and a cowardly Congress declines to speak out against these police-state tactics.”
Now Congress and the president should admit that mistakes were made in the post-9/11 rush to legislate, Libertarians say.
“It’s time to repeal the Patriot Act and to renounce Bush’s breathtaking presidential power grab before any more damage is done to American freedom,” Dasbach said.
Another thing the government should do to commemorate 9/11, Libertarians say, is to reform U.S. foreign policy to reduce the chance
of more terror attacks.“Bush seems oblivious to one of the lessons of 9/11, which is that meddling in hostile foreign nations doesn’t solve problems; it causes them,” Dasbach said. “Now the president is poised to invade Iraq – a nation that poses no imminent threat to the United States – in a move that could prompt terrorists to execute more barbarous attacks on our shores.
“The only thing that could be worse than the tragedy of September 11 would be to have another such massacre, and another one after that.”
“The best way to honor those who perished on September 11 is by ensuring that more Americans – and more American freedoms – don’t perish as well.”