All we take for granted

It's so much — more than we can comprehend. I realized this during our class discussion about the USA PATRIOT act last week in class. I was pretty surprised and kind of frightened to discover that some people in class seemed to have no problem with the act whatsoever. Don't get me wrong, I understood their points, definitely, which were basically, "I don't have a problem with it because I'm not doing anything wrong and I have nothing to hide." I get that, and really I don't have anything to hide either, so I don't feel especially threatened.

But the point of all of this is, that's not the point. The real gist of this is that our first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth and fourteenth amendment rights are being threatened under the Patriot Act. And some people are totally okay with that, which blows my mind. Maybe it's because our generation wasn't the one who had to fight to gain these rights in the first place, an neither were our parents or even grandparents. Maybe it's because we are so far removed from it, and don't know what it's like to not possess these rights, that we take them for granted and assume they will always be there. Amendment rights, of course, are not tangible so maybe that's why it's hard to imagine missing them.

What scares me about the surveillance and lack of privacy included in the Patriot Act is the potential they hold for even more similar legislation. Under Obama's presidency, I don't really think that would happen, but if Bush were to be starting another term, I would definitely be worried. It's a slippery slope, though, no matter who sits in the Oval Office — how far will the government go in the name of security?