Public order advocates are among the majority here in the United States and became an even higher majority following the terrorist attacks on September 11. Several Americans stand firmly behind the recent call for increased funding to help protect us against future terrorist attacks. They feel that as long as we are promised homeland security, the government, in turn, can invade our privacy in order to protect us. This protection gives law enforcement the right to practice racial profiling and denying people their civil rights For example, after the September 11 attacks, government officials began targeting those of Muslim backgrounds without question. Americans grew afraid of anyone from the Middle East and began to practice racism and intolerance. The very rights people fought for twenty to thirty years ago we are willing to relinquish in the name of patriotism.
With that, comes the USA Patriot Act of 2001, “largely enacted as a legislative response to terrorism. The law is officially known as the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (from which the acronym USA PATRIOT is derived. The law dramatically increases the investigatory authority of federal, state, and local police agencies although sometimes only temporarily. The expanded police powers created under the legislation are not limited to investigations of terrorist activity, but apply to many different criminal offenses” (Schmalleger 8). The act allows law enforcement to not only profile those of Middle Eastern descent, but any other race they feel is a threat. This is an example of what it means to be for public order rather than individual rights because under this Act, a person can be arrested and held without their civil rights being respected. . Instead, they can be questioned and held for any particular amount of time as long as law enforcement deems it necessary. As an individual rights advocate, I believe this will lead to profiling and other modes of singling citizens out solely on suspicion.
There are strengths and weaknesses on both sides of these two classifications. How much power do we want to give law enforcement when it comes to arresting and detaining people and when do we decide that too much is too much? There will continue to be the threat that the United States could see another terrorist attack, since September 11, we as Americans feel very unsafe and uneasy. Does this mean that we will continue to raise funds and spend money on defense as long as we live?
As an individual rights advocate I feel that there are several other factors we should be concerned about in our country. There are millions of injustices here in America daily and we continue to shine the light on Iraq and other places without focus on our country. Fighting a war millions of miles away when there is a poor economy, failing schools and an increase in juvenile crime, seems contradictory to me. We want to liberate those of other countries for what their governments have done to them but we need liberation as well. Our focus needs to not be on helping members of a society we fear and distrust in our country, but on ourselves and why there are threats to America in the first place.
For a human being to loathe something as much as those terrorists did our country and citizens is more of a concern for me. Increasing law enforcement in my community and allowing them increased power and discretion seems wrong. I do not feel that the government being allowed to spy is going to stop a terrorist act from happening again. Allowing other countries to live without interference from our government would be something I would support. Accountability for why the richest nation in the world has poor, hungry people is what I want. My civil rights will cease to exist as long as there are Patriot Acts and Homeland Security. I too want to feel protected but want to know that we are being just and fair in bringing this sense of comfort to the American people.
Individual rights or public order advocate, who really cares, we all want the same thing. The American dream lives on in people and they strive daily to reach it. People stand firm behind what our founding fathers preached, whether they intended to include all people at that time is still a question but we still stand behind the notion that we live in a country we love and we will fight for that country by any means necessary. If there is a threat to Americans, we better fight back and fight back hard! If there is an injustice we need to conquer it, if there is anything broken anywhere, we better be the ones who fix it for we are the United States, the most powerful country in the world. The debate between our civil, human and individual rights and our protection as a society and a country should go hand in hand by empowering the citizens of our country, by building a country that others can model, a country that is diverse yet strong. We need to shift our attention towards ourselves and not hide behind fear masked with a constant need for war.
