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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend....
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To: Sully- who wrote (16708)1/4/2006 8:49:59 AM
From: Sully-   of 35834
 
WIRETAP WAKE-UP CALL

Arnold Ahlert
NEW YORK Post Opinion
January 4, 2006

IN its headlong rush to convince us that we're an inch away from becoming a totalitarian state, the rights-in-a-vacuum crowd discovered something quite dismaying: The public isn't buying it.

What do most Americans know that confounds these people? Two possibilities:

1) The first and foremost "right" is the right to live. The public was stunned by the ease with which 19 terrorists were able to plan and execute the operation that killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11. The last thing they want to see is a repeat performance, especially one resulting from an obsession with rights — not just of Americans, but of terrorists.

Not many Americans are willing to re-erect the "wall of separation" between the FBI and the CIA, nor do they wish to stop eavesdropping on terrorist thugs and their domestic allies for the sake of an abstract "purity" regarding rights. In wartime, reality takes precedence over abstraction.

2) Democracy is flexible. Most Americans are willing to make the tradeoff between unfettered rights and reasonable restrictions while we fight for our survival.

Those who insist that rights once taken away are gone forever need to read American history. During the Civil War, Lincoln suspended the right of habeus corpus — but it was reinstated. The Patriot Act has come up for renewal because it has a "sunset clause."

Flexibility is one of America's most precious assets. Too bad the hand-wringers don't get it. Good that most Americans do.

E-mail: ahlert@adelphia

nypost.com
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