Retrospective

13 September, 2001

I was crying earlier this morning, with all the details pouring in from the cab driver's radio.

Terrorism is not just about bombing buildings, killing civilians. True terrorism aims to destroy entire ways of life, to make people live in perpetual terror. Which is why to revoke the right of privacy and personal civil liberties in the face of an emergency, is to play right into the hands of the terrorists. Your society becomes no better, no freer, no more secure than theirs.

The only proper response is to refuse to repudiate the very way of life, the ideals of democracy and liberty, which terrorists seek to destroy.

--- <@a...> wrote:
> I am deeply shocked by yesterday's events. There is a lot of soul
> searching that will be done in the coming days however as a gay person
> one thought has become very clear to me. There was more than
> skyscapers destroyed by those attacks.
>
> Personal civil liberties have taken a major blow. The concept of
> a right to privacy has to have been completely destroyed. How can I
> ask for a right of privacy when preservation of this right can lead to
> such a major loss of human life? I can't ask for it and I don't even
> know if I want it. Do I want privacy or to feel that my friends and
> family are safe? Intellectual freedom means little if you are dead.
>
> But obviously, with this right destroyed, it is not only the
> terrorists who will be vulnerable. Security forces new right to pry
> will be misused and we will all be threatened.
>
> But is there an argument against this? I don't have one.
>
> Anne