Fall 2003 - Carson-Newman College

America’s historical commitmentto civil liberties during wartimecomplicates the current debate. In 1798,President John Adams successfully urgedCongress to grant him the power tocensure public criticism of his administration.Claiming that such measureswere imperative in a time of nationalemergency (an undeclared naval warwith France), Adams and his supportersactively sought to stifle dissent, includingincarcerating their political opponents.During the Civil War, PresidentAbraham Lincoln suspended the writ ofhabeas corpus and even banished one ofhis most vociferous critics to theConfederacy. At the outset of WorldWar I, President Woodrow Wilsonsupported the Sedition Act, which landedseveral of his prominent opponents injail. Finally, no less a proponent of thecivil liberties than Earl Warren supportedthe compulsory removal of Japanese-Americans from their homes during theSecond World War; a policy approvedby the Roosevelt administration.In all of these instances, the federalgovernment willingly suspended timehonoredprecedents of civil liberties inthe name of national security. In thistradition, supporters of the USA PatriotAct, which was hurriedly passed throughCongress in the weeks immediatelyfollowing 9/11, justify expandingnational police powers. To be sure, theUnited States is at a momentous point inits history.Unprecedented improvements inthe fields of communication andtransportation have made the world asmaller place, thus reducing America’shistorical reliance on geographicisolation and friendly borders. With thisin mind, the classic tension betweensecurity and liberty, a dynamicdramatically identified by the politicalphilosopher Thomas Hobbes over threecenturies ago, is once again thrust intothe spotlight.The case for security is easy to make.Few would argue with Hobbes’ assertionthat liberty means precious little withoutthe elimination of violence and the fearof sudden death. Even prominentskeptics of centralized power, such asThomas Jefferson, conceded that thefoundation of a free polity must rest on astate that is strong enough to ensure“domestic tranquility” and powerfulenough to “provide for the commondefense.”If the United States wereto move away from itscommitment to civil liberties,our great store of soft powerwould itself be diminished.A central question in this debate iswhether or not America’s commitmentto certain rights is somehow contrary tonational security. Does the insistence ondue process and the need for a publicrealm, meaning one that is open to manycompeting and dissenting opinions, runcounter to the needs of national defense?Many partisans of the security side of thedebate seem to think so. From theirperspective, the insistence on observingcivil liberties and the rights of the11