Loss of Our Rights is No Solution

AS I SEE IT
Cynthia Tucker 15sep01

Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor for the Atlanta Constitution.

The news is nearly unbearable. The crime unspeakable. The devastation unfathomable. As news images focus on the faces and families of our countless dead, rage inevitably mingles with horror and grief.

As we search for reassurance that this will never happen again, some national leaders and security experts suggest that much about American culture must change: our civil liberties, our tolerance, our diversity. Some call for less immigration, for expanded police powers and for unleashing all restraints on the FBI and the CIA.

As Americans watch the mounting body count, those calls may seem almost reasonable. Wouldn't less freedom be a fair price to pay for more security? Wouldn't allowing the FBI to invade the privacy of all Arab Americans be a necessary counter to suicidal fanatics?

A police state is easier to protect from terrorism. Crime was nearly nonexistent in the former Soviet Union, and the only terrorism in Fidel Castro's Cuba comes from his own security activities.

But America's freedoms and ideals are the virtues that make it worth dying for. If we surrender them, Osama bin Laden has already won.

They hate us not only for our prosperity and technological advances but also because of our tolerance, our openness, our religious and racial diversity. They would like nothing more than for us to become like them: intolerant of those who do believe what they believe, repressive, backward-looking, fearful of political and cultural progress.

There is no doubt that all Americans, regardless of race or religion, will have to make sacrifices in a long war against terrorism. Not only will air travel be less convenient and more expensive as authorities tighten airport security, but our entire economy could also fall into a long recession if oil supplies are disrupted, as they might be if we take the fight into oil-producing regions.

My generation, coddled by prosperity and softened by peace, must prepare to make the sacrifices our parents made. But we ought to be able to learn from the mistakes of those in the "Greatest Generation" as well as from their accomplishments.

They made the shameful decision to intern Japanese Americans for no reason other than ancestry. So we ought to know better than to blame all Ameri-

can Muslims.

They accommodated an out-of-control McCarthyism that made suspects of law-abiding Americans, ending their careers and pushing a few to suicide. Under the guise of fighting communism, they allowed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to pursue a crusade against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Those crusades made no contribution to ending the Cold War, but only pitted one group of Americans against another.

It is easy enough to ignore the lunatic ravings of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who in a sick perversion of Christian values have declared this week's devastation the fault of gays, lesbians, supporters of reproductive rights and the American Civil Liberties Union.

But in a time of widespread anxiety, it is harder to fend off the siren song of fear sung by those who would have us trade in a little liberty for a little more safety.

There is no such thing as a little liberty. Before you know it, you don't have any, and America is no longer the shining beacon of equality and freedom that terrorists loathe.

UNIVERSAL. PRESS SYNDICATE