It is not when life runs in normal channels that one measures liberty. It is when the unexpected happens. Judging the civil liberties of Americans on September 10th proves nothing. After September 11th is when one applies the tests.
To wave a Bill of Rights and blather about freedom means nothing when the Patriot Act can be raced through Congress. For the rights people owned on September 10th are proven to be provisional.
The ability to overreact to events proves that whatever rights Americans believed were sacrosanct are simply options which may be withdrawn.
There is no democracy in the Boardroom. The MD or CEO decides and until removed from office, it is his way. Aggrieved employees may launch law suit, and be fired, and regardless of the outcome, things will not be as they were.
The reaction to 9/11 was not a recognition of mistakes; i.e. accepting Saudis to train as pilots, for example, but a response in which rights have been stripped from the American people and a concentration camp established in Guantanamo Bay.
Although the President of the United States wants to close that base, he is surrounded by those who have no difficulty in stripping human rights from persons they think are dangerous, and permitting torture.
The reaction to 9/11 tests how much has been puffery and how much is true. And that liberty is a ‘dry weather’ concept.