How Freedom and Individual Liberty Stopped the Terrorists

By Anthony Watson (c) 2003

The ideas of freedom and individual liberty have never been more under assault than they are today. The Founding Fathers laid the groundwork for a society so forward thinking and revolutionary that "moneyed" power had a hard time accepting it. Within a few generations their ideas and framework were under assault by those who had been elected into power in their footsteps. These elected positions of power have since constantly sought to curtail these rights. Lack of technology severely crippled their efforts to rein in freedomn. Until the late twentieth century, the vastness of the country limited meaningful surveillance. Once technology began to offer real intelligence at a national and global scale, there was still substantial resistance to domestic spying by our own government.

That changed on September 11th, 2001. Now that the fear and suspicion of terrorism has transformed America, those technological abilities are being turned to the curtailment of individual freedom and liberty in the name of safety. Despite Ben Franklin’s grim words of warning, Americans are afraid and believe that the sacrifice of some liberty and freedom will make them safer.

They are very wrong. The curtailment of individual liberty and freedom can only make us less safe. This seems hard to believe, but it is true. One need only consider the events of September 11th, 2001 to realize the truth. The cold harsh reality of that truth is scary and makes us want to hand it off to big government. Unfortunately, big government cannot handle it. Not in its current incarnation and certainly not without instituting laws and procedures that would seem totalitarian even to our post-911 eyes. On September 11th, 2001, the government’s inherent inability to protect us from this type of terrorism was clearly demonstrated. Big government not only failed to uncover the plot, it failed to stop the first plane from hitting its target, and in fact failed to stop three out of the four airplanes hijacked on September 11th, 2001. The people on board stopped Flight 93. Free people acting on information available in a free society stopped the only plane that did not hit its target.

I do not mean to condemn the government and the military for failing to stop the three planes. It is the nature of the bloated bureaucratic beast that is government. It is too big and pondering to react to the increasingly fluid and flexible attacks of the 21st century terrorist organizations. Only, we as a people can compete with those organizations. We must not give up our ability to defend ourselves against terrorists. Every time we cede an individual right or liberty we make ourselves less safe, not more.

Today in late 2003, I do not believe the people on board could have stopped the terrorists. All communications are subject to snooping after the Patriot Act. Some Ashcroft flunky would cut off the cell phone calls that allowed those people on board Flight 93 to come to an enlightened decision as to what action to take. Perhaps the passengers on Flight 93 fashioned weapons from pocketknives and nail clippers, which would now be denied them. Even after the 9-11 disasters, the passengers stopped the next terrorist attempt aboard an airline. The shoe bomber made it through security and was going to do his dirty deed on board, but was noticed and restrained by passengers. Big government failed again.

We are spending a lot of money and setting a lot of bad precedents with these "no constitutional rights" zones being created in our nation’s airports. I personally cherish my freedoms and rights and do not wish to give them up so I can get on an airplane. I think many Americans are of like mind and that this fear of giving up one’s rights, keeps many away from airports. Still, I cannot put voice to these concerns without some meaningful alternatives to that which was put in place to "protect" us.

Here is an alternative course of action that I argue does a better job of protecting us from terrorists while also protecting individual freedom and liberty. First, we should roll back much of the changes related to CAPPS such as the random searching of individuals driven by shadowy computerized databases. America is free and its people must have freedom of movement without being required to "show their papers". This is what it means to live in a free society. Reducing this security burden should free up many millions of dollars to be spent more effectively. Specifically, we should have more air marshals. Until we can get enough air marshals trained to be on every flight, we should randomly assign them, with that randomness being a closely guarded piece of "national security" data. Next we should harden all the cockpit doors and allow pilots to carry side arms. With these things in place, 9-11 cannot happen again and there is no need to repeal the Bill of Rights within airline terminals. The fact is the terrorists are not likely to strike the same place, the same way, anyway.

The passengers on Flight 93 showed us the way. They demonstrated the power of the people. The greatness in America lies in her people and the diversity of those people. Due to the history of individual freedom and liberty, one hundred people plucked from the streets and put into an airplane will contain a wide range of people and skills. This is our strength. Among those passengers, may be current and former military personnel, police and firefighters, nurses and doctors and even some gang bangers, bikers and an assortment of bad asses, malcontents and ne’er do wells, but they are all Americans as messy as that is to live in. If the government had done nothing after 9-11, I hazard a guess that there would have been no recurrence of 9-11, because the passengers on Flight 93 demonstrated the true mettle of Americans.

That phrase, "Let’s Roll!", should be immortalized in the American pantheon, because those men and women were thrown together by random chance, but they did this nation proud when they stopped that plane. They truly saved lives by sacrificing their own. They made terrorists realize that Americans were not the sheep we are often portrayed as.

It is when I think about what happened on Flight 93 that I achieve the most confidence that our Founding Fathers' elevation of the rights of the individual above all else, truly is the correct course. Not only a correct course, but a more defensible course than ever before. It is what makes America such a complicated, trailblazing experiment in human culture. We need to take back our country from the fear-mongers and the only way to do that is in the voting booths.

###