Unpublished Paper
The War Against the Bill of Rights: How the Bush Administration’s War on Terrorism Became the War on Civil Liberties
(2017)
Abstract
Who does not remember the awful visions of people being led out of the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993 when international terrorism first came to the United States; or, the images of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, collapsed and smoking in Oklahoma City, when an American took the lives of 168 other Americans by detonating a massive truck bomb? And, of course, who does not remember the image of the second jetliner crashing into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, or the images of desperate people jumping from the upper floors of the smoking towers? All of these images, all of these events struck fear into the hearts of all Americans; fear of an unknown enemy, and fear of death wrought suddenly, violently and without warning.
It was Benjamin Franklin who warned, “[t]hey who can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Since the first World Trade Center attacks in 1993, America has seen a steady denigration of the individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Americans, out of fear of terrorist attack, and politicians, out of fear of being labeled soft on terrorism, have acquiesced to this assault on their liberty.
It is the purpose of this paper to show how there has been a systematic erosion of the balance of power among the supposedly co-equal branches of government with a corresponding increase in the power of the presidency. Executive power, either by design or default, has grown at the expense of American liberties. The people, the Congress, and the courts, have sat idly by, willing to trade hard-won liberties for the perception of safety. This paper will look at the “basic rights” amendments, the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, and how the actions taken by the Bush administration attempted or succeeded in diminishing the rights that those amendments were designed to protect.
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring June 12, 2017
Citation Information
Albert E Poirier. "The War Against the Bill of Rights: How the Bush Administration’s War on Terrorism Became the War on Civil Liberties" (2017) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/albert_poirier/5/