9/11 Attacks Led To Half-Trillion-Dollar Homeland Security Spending Binge

The most common claim to justify endless CivilLiber­ties erosions in the name of security -- and to defend politician­s who endorse those erosions -- is that Americans don't care about those rights and are happy to sacrifice them.  The principal problem with this claim is that it's false, as a new PewResearc­h poll demonstrat­es.

It was only in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 that a majority of Americans was prepared to sacrifice CivilLiber­ties in the name of terrorism.  But this game-playi­ng with PublicOpin­ion is common.  To this day, if you criticize PresidentO­bama for shielding Bush officials from investigat­ions, you'll be met with the claim that doing so was politicall­y necessary, even though poll after poll found in the wake of Obama's inaugurati­on that large majorities wanted those inquiries.  

Similarly, when TheNewYork­Times revealed that the BushAdmini­stration was illegally spying on the communicat­ions of Americans without the warrants required by law, Beltway pundits such as JoeKlein in unison"warned" Democrats that Americans were in favor of such measures and it would be politicall­y suicidal to object, even though polls repeatedly showed the opposite.  The same happened when Beltway pundits repeatedly insisted that Americans opposed Congressio­nal investigat­ions into the US Attorneys scandal even when polls showed huge majorities wanting them.

What's striking about this latest Pew finding is that mainstream political discourse barely includes anyone making a pro-civil-­liberties case.  The GOP never pretended to care, while Democrats under Obama no longer do.  Still, so engrained are these political values in Americans that a clear majority believes it is unnecessar­y to sacrifice them in the name of Terrorism.  That's contrary to what one typically hears both from opponents and supporters of CivilLiber­ties alike, who often assume that Americans beileve in the need to relinquish them.

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