We Must Be Prepared to Sacrifice National Liberties

“We must be prepared to sacrifice national liberties to defeat terrorism”

One cannot deny that during times of terrorism, people depend heavily on their government for their security. As a result, it is necessary that certain adjustments have to be made by executive officials in order to ensure safety. Policies, such as the Patriot Act, showed that, in times of crisis, security is the state’s priority and that we cannot have liberty without security. Certainly, this is justifiable given that one of the government’s major purposes is to protect the country they govern. After all, counterterrorism strategies that identify and prevent terrorist plots are better actions than the old procedure of waiting for the attack to occur, tracking the suspects and counting the bodies. Therefore, the common argument is sacrificing some liberty in order to assure safety is reasonable. However, there are some, including myself who disagree on this idea. Throughout this report, I’ll be discussing three major rationales behind my opinion.

First, there is no trade-off between liberty and security. Liberty is the state of being free from restrictions. While security, is the state of being free from crisis or peril. It is wrong to assume that they are mutually exclusive; and that either we are free or not. No one would feel safe in a country where people’s actions are limited and small ‘violations’ can lead to severe sanctions or in an open country where terrorist can exploit the openness of the society to terrorize. In addition, there is also no evidence to suggest that giving up our liberty equals to the nation’s security. The recent Boston Bombing showed that even under the government’s intensive surveillance, terrorist attacks can still happen. There is no such thing as absolute security. Even if people sacrifice all of their liberty, somehow someone will find a way to outsmart the system to harm. This implies that liberty is forfeited for nothing.

Second, by surrendering our...