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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Bob Barr: British Model Puts Freedom, Rights At Risk American historian Thomas Fleming wrote an essay a few years ago that appeared in a book titled "What If?" The book contains a number of essays by prominent writers and historians speculating on how history might be altered had certain decisions and circumstances happened differently. Fleming analyzes 13 events that could have changed history during our War for Independence, resulting in a British victory and the premature end of our struggle for freedom from the British crown. Judging by the manner in which many 21st century American pundits have been clamoring for our country to jettison the Bill of Rights and adopt the British model — according to which the government can listen in to whomever it wants and gather evidence without having to first establish a reasonable basis to believe the person or persons did something wrong — it appears many of these modern-day Tories wished Britain had in fact defeated the Colonies way back then. This latest round of Anglo adoration stems from the fact that British authorities apparently were instrumental in uncovering last week's plot to hijack and destroy a number of passenger aircraft by engaging in investigative techniques that would not pass constitutional muster in the United States. This analysis reflects a fundamental lack of understanding of why we fought a war to secure our independence from Great Britain in the first place, and why we have been, since our victory in 1783, a freer people than our former English brethren. The British have no Bill of Rights; in fact they have no written Constitution. We have both — and I would proudly stack them up against the legal framework of any other nation on earth (including the U.K.). Yet, those championing a loosening of our right against unreasonable searches and seizures and who hope for the Bush administration to enjoy by law the power to listen in on whatever of our conversations it wants whenever it wants, apparently prefer the British model. In a time of uncertainty and danger such as we face today, it is tempting to cast longing gazes across the Atlantic and yearn for a truly national police and intelligence force that can investigate and arrest citizens with no more than a hunch or a passing suspicion that someone doesn't look right. In our system — a system crafted in opposition to Britain's by our Founding Fathers nearly two and a quarter centuries ago — the government must satisfy certain minimal burdens before it can peruse our e-mails, open our letters, search our homes or listen to our private conversations. Before we start advocating the dismantling of the Fourth Amendment (or the First, Second, Fifth or Sixth) as necessary to thwarting future terrorist attacks, we might want to remind ourselves just what we'd be giving up, and what little we would be gaining. We might also reflect on a bit of American history, something about which modern Anglo-apologists appear blissfully ignorant. Americans have long possessed a dangerously short collective memory. The latest crisis or danger, whatever it might be, magically wipes from memory prior events and problems. The most immediate problem becomes the most serious ever faced. Thus, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have become for government officials and advocates of the so-called "British model" the "most serious crisis ever faced by the American people." The fact is, Sept. 11 was not the most serious crisis we've faced as a nation. In the first decades following the Revolutionary War, our infant nation's very existence was threatened directly and massively by Britain, which at the time maintained a military hugely superior to ours and wielded economic power that far overshadowed our nascent economy. Yet despite these direct and massive threats to the very existence of our country (which included an actual invasion in the War of 1812), our Founding Fathers and ultimately a strong majority of our citizens determined that our continued freedom and sovereignty did not lie in the British model of virtually unlimited government power over the individual citizen's privacy. They — as should we today — correctly concluded that in America, we survive and flourish as a free people not by constantly searching for ways to make government's job easier, but by forcing it to adhere strictly to laws and fundamental principles based on citizens' rights, not government's. Even during other crises America has faced — the Civil War, or the First and Second World Wars — which also represented far more serious problems than posed by our Sept. 11 tormentors, America resisted the urge to dismantle the Bill of Rights in the search for the Holy Grail of "safety." It is a shame we have forgotten so much in the past generation that we are now witnessing a resurgence of the insecurity that emboldened Tory sympathizers to nearly scuttle our Revolution before it had barely begun. •Former Congressman and U.S. Attorney Bob Barr practices law in Atlanta. Website: http://www.bobbarr.org.
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