Sweet land of liberty … believe it or not

I am always bemused by people who are concerned about the loss of civil liberties in our fair republic as we fight the war on terrorism.

There is no doubt - and I would challenge you to prove otherwise - that we live in a place and time where individual liberties and civil liberties are more extensive and more valued than they have ever been before on the face of the earth.

And yet a huge number of people take the time each day to complain about how dangerous the Bush administration is, or to worry about the "all-out assault" on our civil liberties.

What these people mainly seem concerned about is that the federal government is actually taking steps to try to protect us from additional attacks by al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations. Now, I'm not sure how many of these "civil libertarians" would have allowed the September 11 attacks to go forward as planned if the alternative had been to do warrantless wiretaps on phones being used by Osama bin Laden's lieutenants, but I for one think you surrender your civil rights when you swear allegiance to a holy cause of murder and plot to kill people in an act of war.

Most of the civil liberties crowd say they aren't trying to protect the terrorists; they just don't want the government spies to accidentally get a look at some phone record of theirs while they are hunting down the killers.

Say what?

Perhaps the songwriter got it wrong. Perhaps "freedom's just another word for nothing's more important than me" or "freedom's just another word for too selfish to care."

In fact, freedom is the "absence of restraints upon our ability to think and act." That's the definition used at Wikipedia, the online encylopedia, and it's a pretty straightforward one, which I think we can all agree upon.

The good news for all us freedom-loving Americans is that we have almost no restraints upon our ability to think and act. Of course, that is sometimes bad news, too, considering how poorly some of us think, and how rudely some of us act.

But from a purely practical basis of daily living, almost every one of us goes about our business with absolutely no restrictions on the choices we make. Indeed, I would challenge you to explain one civil liberty that you personally have lost as a result of the war on terror being fought to protect you and your family from being blown up.

You are free to travel throughout our country without interference. You are free to read anything you want. You are free to call the president of the United States the liar-in-chief without being rounded up the next day and shot, as would happen in many other countries. You are free to be an atheist, a Satanist or a Scientologist and no one can do anything about it except laugh at you. You are free to laugh at anyone you want, including the pope, the president or your neighbor who stockpiles guns. You are free to stockpile guns, as long as they are legal guns.

Of course, you are not free to break the law, but that is true anywhere where there is rule of law, and here in America, the scope of legal restrictions on our freedom is greatly limited by the Constitution. Indeed, our valuation of civil liberties is so extensive that we are willing to let child killers walk free because they did not get their Miranda rights, for God's sake.

All in all, I can't think of anywhere else I would have more freedom to do and say whatever I want.

Which makes me wonder what parallel universe people are living in when they complain about the loss of their civil liberties under the Bush administration.

Just what exactly are they talking about? Oh yes, they want to live in absolute certainty that their phone call records will not be seen by anyone other than the phone company. They don't like the idea that government agents trying to track down terrorist activity might get a look at the phone call they made to their mistress, or their bookie, or their hit man. But let's face it, the federal government has absolutely no reason to hunt down criminals through phone-call records, and even if they did so, the courts would throw out the charges in a heartbeat. Thus, there is no true infringement of a liberty involved unless you are a terrorist.

Besides, when you make a phone call, you are already giving the phone company access to that information. If the phone company chooses to keep track of calls made to terrorists or pornographers or hit men and turn that information over to the government, there would be nothing you could do about it. You made the phone call, but the phone company owns the information about the phone call. If they think you are breaking a law, they have just as much right to call the police with a tip as you do if you see a marijuana plant growing in your neighbor's cellar.

No one's freedom gives them the right to break the law. The right to be secure in your own house does not mean you have the right to do anything you want while you are there. You have no right to do illegal drugs in the privacy of your own home (at least not yet) and you have no right to violate national security laws just because you are a reporter shielded by the First Amendment (at least you should not).

But, of course, because we are a freedom-loving people we have made it as difficult as possible for the government to wield its power against individuals. The government needs to have probable cause before searching a home or issuing an arrest warrant. Those civil liberties have not been diminished one bit for the average American, and unless you are chatting with terrorists on the Internet or by telephone, then you will almost certainly not hear from the FBI or the National Security Agency.

You still have exactly the same freedoms and civil liberties today that you had six years ago. And truth be told, you have many more civil liberties today than you would have had 100 years ago. At that time, if you sold pictures of naked women you could be sent to jail; today you can become a rich celebrity. At that time, if you were to criticize the government of the United States you could be arrested for sedition; today you can become a media darling. At that time, if you were to perform an abortion, you could be arrested and sent to jail; today you can become a rich doctor.

I guess some people just don't know enough to be grateful for living at a time when they have VIRTUALLY NO RESTRICTIONS on how they go about their lives at church, in their homes, on their computers, and on the road from sea to shining sea. They don't see it that way. They figure if the government is trying to track down terrorists by looking at library records, then by God, it is a personal infringement of their civil liberties.

Sorry, but no, it isn't. When the terrorists blow up the library with you and your family in it, however; yeah, that is an infringement.

I don't expect some people to see the difference.