Pubdate: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL) Copyright: 2000 St. Petersburg Times Contact: http://www.sptimes.com/ Forum: http://www.sptimes.com/Interact.html Author: Greg Daniel ATTACKS ON BILL OF RIGHTS IMPERIL FREEDOM Freedom in this country will not end because of a national emergency or a deranged political leader. Freedom will end when the last vestiges of our Bill of Rights are shredded in the name of a war on crime or a war on drugs or some other war waged by government to justify the destruction of the Fourth Amendment and the expansion of the power of the police to intrude into our lives. Our freedom will end when we are no longer shielded or protected from the police. The Jan. 6 letter Fourth Amendment shouldn't shield armed criminals is a tragic reminder of the scope of the damage that has been wrought against the fundamental freedoms and protections that form the basis of our existence as a nation. The gist of the letter was this: Honest and law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear from an encounter with police. After all, Great Britain has no "Fourth Amendment" protection from unreasonable searches and seizures -- why should we? Why do we need the Fourth Amendment? Or the Fifth? Or the Sixth? After all, we've got freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, etc. Why do we care whether or not the police stop and search us any time they choose? If we've done nothing wrong, if we've got nothing to hide, what's the problem? We have nothing to fear from our own government, do we? Yeah, we do. The founding fathers knew a little something about the need for restraints on government. They also knew a little something about the abuses of power routinely engaged in by an unrestrained government. They knew that the concepts of freedom embodied in the Bill of Rights could not survive without the enumerated restraints on the government's power to intrude on the lives of the citizens. One of the problems some people have with freedom is the fact that freedom includes the right to engage in conduct we don't want the government to know about, to intrude upon, to meddle in or to go rooting around in. Freedom will cease to exist the moment the Fourth Amendment no longer protects us from such unwarranted intrusions by the government. Why? Because unbridled government intrusion into our lives would provoke a "prior restraint" on every activity in our lives. The erosion of the Fourth Amendment is one of the greatest dangers of the last 50 years. The founding fathers were right. The greatest threat to our nation is not freedom -- it is the willingness of the citizenry to permit government to strip away the protections of the Bill of Rights. -- Greg Daniel, Clearwater - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart