[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Stand For Or Against Profiling People For Purpose Of Airport
In the aftermath of September 11, democracy can also be seen as an enemy of freedom. What John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville called the "tyranny of the majority," which mindlessly follows convention-or perhaps mass hysteria-is clearly evident at U.S. airports, where middle-class America is positively relieved to have its luggage ransacked and shoes X-rayed, as well as to see racial profiling proceed, as long as Arab Americans are targeted rather than African Americans. Supposedly in the name of "the majority," and of preserving our democratic freedoms, individual liberties have been abridged in the justice system, through such measures as secret detentions, permission for prison guards to listen to conversations between some prisoners and their attorneys, and efforts to replace criminal trials with military tribunals for suspected terrorists. Increased FBI wiretapping authority, military control of information available to the press, and vague scare-tactic warnings of future terrorist attacks undermine key liberal democratic values concerning privacy and freedom of information.
Those who have raised questions about these actions have been chastised as unpatriotic, disloyal, and self-serving, suggesting that a deeper threat to liberty in the aftermath of September 11 may lie in the psychology of Americans. Liberty is jeopardized not just by the pointlessness of many of the new rules regarding security and immigration and the racism with which they are frequently enacted. It is even more seriously endangered by the mindless enthusiasm with which Americans have embraced these new surveillance strategies in the interest of feeling "safer," even though no actual increase in safety has been demonstrated. Fear, not a real concern for freedom, is motivating both the new policies and citizens' attitudes toward them. Such a psychology threatens to transform, and possibly undermine, the democratic ethos in the contemporary United States. For as Benjamin Franklin....
