Civil liberties are something we often take for granted. Speech, expression, the right to gather publicly. We live in a country where the constitution guarantees everyone those and many other basic rights. But what if all that changed? There are multitudes around the globe living today under oppressive rule where some or all of those rights can be taken away on a whim, if they ever existed at all. In a post-9/11 world, fear has many times proved strong enough to sway governments, even our own, into acts that many consider oppressive.
Richard Jackson, in a book published by Benjamin Franklin, wrote, “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” What would you do if your basic civil liberties were revoked in the name of public safety? How would you respond to a government of oppression? How important are your freedoms? Would you risk imprisonment or even death to fight for all of our freedom? Would you break Curfew?
