Twelve years ago, our country faced one of the most brutal terrorist attacks in its history. We lost loved ones at the Twin Towers in New York, Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and on United Airlines Flight 93. In the days to come, we rallied around the flag, regained a strong sense of national pride, and stood together. America was on the mend, united in the face of adversity and stronger than ever.
In an attempt to stop terrorism and keep Americans safe, government has grown in the form of increased spending, greater activity overseas, the TSA, and the NSA. Al-Qaeda did much more than take lives on one calendar day. They stole several freedoms from our democracy for the foreseeable future.
Since September 11, 2001, government spending in the United States has spiraled out of control. In the first decade after the attacks, the United States spent more than $7.6 trillion on defense and homeland security, with $635.9 billion going towards homeland security alone. Our nuclear weapons spending increased 21 percent and we have now spent more public funding on the concept of homeland security than we did on the entire New Deal. While the New Deal grew government, it also built needed infrastructure. Today’s extra spending has brought nothing positive to the table, just an ever increasing death toll and the elimination of essential democratic freedoms.
Whether you consider yourself a non-interventionist or a war hawk, far too many lives are being lost every day in conflicts abroad. Beyond the cold, hard casualty numbers, we continue to see families separated by oceans and time zones, and watch spouses, parents, and children come back to the home “not quite the same.” Despite catching Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and killing Osama bin Laden, the nebulous War on Terror continues, and our people continue to die.
While our brave men and women sacrifice much to protect our freedoms at home, the TSA violates those freedoms and thousands of American citizens’ personal privacy each day at our airports. TSA agents practically grope innocent, law-abiding travelers all the while violating the spirit of the Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches. If you refuse to an up-close-and-personal encounter with your local government bureaucrat, you have two options: do not fly or go through an X-ray scanner that very well may have health risks. All this harassment from Big Brother comes with very little in return. According to a leaked TSA report, security screeners were unable to detect 60 percent of threats passed through security during a test integrated into real-life screening. Further, the TSA has never caught a single terrorist.
Recently through classified documents released by Edward Snowden and others, we have learned just how nosey our government has become. Instead of focusing on international threats, the government has decided to include spying on its own law-abiding citizens through the National Security Agency[1] . While I do not discredit the idea of home grown terrorism (and actually believe it to be a dangerous threat) the current administration has ramped up its observances of the common-folk to extreme measures. In fact, the NSA has collected, stored, accessed, and even distributed legally protected communications, including emails and phone calls.
With all these losses of freedom, the terrorists of 9/11 were more successful at undermining the United States than we would like to believe. They attacked us because they hated our value systems and our way of life. They hated our democracy, liberty, and freedoms, and their horrible actions have caused us to chip away at these ideals ourselves. While we should respond to the threat of terrorism, we should be just as mindful of the equally tangible threat of an ever-growing government. As President Ronald Reagan put it, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”