We shouldn't waste our time observing "rights" and "liberties" when fighting terrorism

The arguments I make are popular because many people share the same views. In fact the majority of the people in this country oppose the patriot act. 1) "Government's constitutional duty is to protect its citizens" This government is a government of the people. In theory each persons opinion should be valued equally. The majority of the people in this country do not support the unwarranted surveillance the the Patriot act allows. As a result it should be struck down. 2)"Right to being alive is the most important of all" Since when is being alive a right? It's simply a biological fact, either you're alive or you're dead, you don't have the right to live. 3)"The argument that our civil liberties are being denied has no real world correlary as there are few, if any accounts of this realistically affecting anyone" The Patriot Act specifically targets immigrants and people of Middle Eastern dissent, you don't hear about it because there are no white males being affected by the Patriot Act. And since the surveillance doesn't require warrants for all we know the infringement of our civil liberties may be extremely widespread. 4)"Terrorists only win when we DRASTICALLY sacrifice our rights or we all die" completely untrue, the point of terrorism is to breed fear in a population, and to degrade a population, terrorists aren't working on completely conquering all western civilization, they're working on decreasing the quality of our lifestyle, as well as lowering the number of freedoms we have. 5)"All of your arguments, though popular, only apply to a far greater sacrifice of rights" Once again, popular arguments are the arguments of the people, and your argument is that we should ignore rights and civil liberties. You never mentioned how far we should be willing to go. You're supposed to be supporting the greater sacrifice of rights, after all that's the topic you created. 6)"The sacrifices we are currently making are small and will not lead to greater sacrifices due to a further increase in public awareness at that time and the nature of our government" Yet again, while you may not thing the current sacrifices we are making are great (which they are), you're still a proponent of making those greater sacrifices. "We can sit here and talk about how we have to defend our rights and protect citizens from government, but does it have any real effect on your life?" Of course it has an effect on my life. If the government continues to ignore our civil liberties then it will have an impact of every single citizen in this country in a huge way. "All of your examples assume that we are, in some way, realistically denied our civil liberties" We are being denied our civil liberties. If our rights are being infringed upon in any way that simply opens the door to the same thing in the future. And of course any ignorance of the rights of citizens infringes upon their constitutional rights, which is BAD. "As far as terrorism is concerned. This is a matter of principle versus application. It would be foolish not to further ensure our safety in the face of this new threat. The claim that protecting ourselves is 'letting the terrorists win' is ridiculous." Principle's extremely important in our society. And what we're doing right now is singling out all the people in our country of Middle Eastern decent simply because of their heritage. The same thing happened in WWII right here in the United States. Japanese people who were citizens of this country were rounded up and put into camps simply because they were Japanese. Today it's agreed that what we did then was wrong. And what we're doing now isn't that different. Discrimination of people based on their heritage should have been eliminated from this country long ago, but it sticks around because fear-mongerers use threat of attack as an excuse. And we are letting the terrorists win by limiting the civil liberties of the people in this country. Contrary to what you might believe, it's what they want. "If we REALISTICALLY weigh the pros and cons this is all obvious." Your right, let's do that: Pros: Increased safety (questionable) Cons: Promotes fear, Scraps our civil liberties, encourages discrimination, not actually proven that our safety has increased. "the effects of losing the rights we have lost are vastly trumped by the safety we have achieved." And is the safety we've "achieved" because of our lack of care when it comes to rights? No! What was the last major terror attack prevented because of the Patriot Act? Riddle me that. The limiting of our rights IS a slippery slope, though you might claim otherwise, and the limitation placed on us now isn't increasing our safety, it's simply allowing the government to have an excuse to lock people up, and to ignore the laws that are their job to uphold. You can claim that this doesn't have any impact on our day to day lives, and you might be right. But what about 10 years down the road? What about 20 years down the road? What happens when the Patriot Act is used as precedent for limiting our rights even more? In Pakistan right now the constitution has been suspended in the name of "safety" and it's the same type of person that agrees with that, as agrees with the limiting of rights here at home.