Words, words, words

I was nominated in, competed, and won (apparently) my division in the qualifying round for the Bank of America scholarship--something of a big deal at my school, or so I am told. It seems a rather big fuss: all that happened was they corralled the twelve of us into a room, got us to write a 1-minute speech in 45 minutes, and then had us give it, and then participate in discussion. Short, sweet, altogether tense.

I got to keep my paper, so here's what I said. The topic was on 9/11, homeland security, wiretapping and surveillance, the right to privacy, the fourth amendment--the prompt was "should the government be able to impinge upon the fourth-amendment rights and the right to privacy in the name of homeland security?" My speech is hardly stellar; it is overly verbose to show fluency of vocabulary and pronunciation, but whatchagonnado?

* * *

September 11th changed everything. Even now, there is still a gaping crater in the American psyche, much like the one in lower Manhattan. The United States lost its sense of security on 9/11, lost the illusion of impenetrability afforded by two oceans, a formidable military, affluence, and success. Instead, we were left with terror.

After that date, our leaders bade us return to our daily lives. And we tried--oh, how we tried! We shopped, we worked, we stilled our trembling nerves and seized our suitcases to board airplanes again. But despite this, something was missing: our feeling of safety.

That missing sense of safety is why we passed the Patriot Act, why surveillance cameras and roving wiretaps have become part of America's vernacular. We seek to protect ourselves from the nebulous foe, to make our country safe once more.

Unfortunately, that safety is an illusion. We were not safe then, nor are we now, and no matter how many liberties we sacrifice--privacy, free press, habeas corpus--we shall never again regain that blissful ignorance. And even if we could, we should not be willing to sell our nation's founding principles in exchange. Benjamin Franklin himself once said, "Those who would sacrifice a little liberty in exchange for a little security deserve, and will get, neither."