By Scott Wright

One of last week's letters to the editor mentioned that old adage, "Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The ensuing paragraphs mount a stout defense of President Bush's covert program to spy on American citizens in the name of national defense. The writer of the letter also claims she is appalled that any American would be "willing to attack and threaten this wartime president for doing his duty ... to protect our lives and those of our children and grandchildren."

Certainly, in the wake of Sept. 11, President Bush has an unenviable job, that of defending 300 million Americans. And perhaps this president even believes he's doing the right thing by usurping the Constitution of the United States to do what is, after all, his sworn duty. But if anyone's behaving in a fashion that is, by definition, un-American, I propose that it is those who follow this policy blindly, without questioning the rationale that led President Bush and others in his administration to trample, in Nixonian fashion, the very document our soldiers are fighting overseas to defend.

First of all, Bush's domestic surveillance program is, by definition, illegal. Period. It's as simple as that. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) prohibits "electronic surveillance" of "any wire or radio communication sent by or intended to be received by a particular, known United States person who is in the United States," unless authorized by the courts. The administration has already admitted to intercepting phone calls to and from American citizens in the United States. They broke the law and admitted it; even the president's defenders admit he broke the law, so there's no argument there from anyone who's knowledgeable on the topic.

Instead, their defense of the president is basically that Bush had to break the law in order to fulfill his constitutional duties as protector of the American people. But no court has ever suggested that FISA is flawed in a way that keeps the president from doing his job. Why is that?

Because such an argument would be ridiculous, that's why.

Even Bush's own Justice Department knows the argument would never fly, which is why Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzales has taken an entirely different route to defend his boss.

Gonzales claims the president's actions were, in fact, authorized by Congress when they passed the post-Sept. 11 resolution allowing Bush to fight terrorists with "all necessary and appropriate force." That's a flawed argument, too, for reasons I don't have room to get into this week. But at least it's proof -- from the attorney general of the United States, no less -- that there's nothing wrong with FISA, which means it's only a matter of time before the White House is made to look like a bunch of lawbreakers in front of someone -- either a court of law of a congressional hearing, or probably both.

By their own, repeated admission, this is an administration that has circumvented the Constitution, spied on American citizens in their homes and consistently argued in favor of locking away Americans for indefinite periods of time without providing them their constitutionally guaranteed rights of due process or charging them with any crime. That the people who question these blatant abuses of power are considered un-American by any of their fellow citizens just goes to show who, exactly, would leave us doomed to repeat the past by failing to learn from it.

Certainly, as the author of the letter to the editor mentioned, there are lessons to be learned from what happened on Sept. 11. Americans must continue to be more vigilant than ever before. But that vigilance must also be put to use on the home front, lest we lose the very freedoms we are fighting abroad to protect.

Do I think George W. Bush consciously made a decision to try and take advantage of the threat of terrorism to erode the protections of the Constitution? Absolutely not. Hell, the guy can't pronounce the word nuclear and almost choked himself to death with a pretzel. Trust me, he'd never have thought of this. My guess is Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are behind this one.

Regardless, if we allow the current, obviously illegal "protections" of American citizens to continue, who knows what slippery slope the country will be sliding down in 20, 50, or 100 years? The precedent will have been established by our inaction, possibly to the great detriment of our children and grandchildren. No American alive today will ever be forgiven for failing to learn this history lesson, if instead we sit idly by and allow this process of diminished rights and freedoms to take root.

The letter writer says she thought we had learned our lesson after Sept. 11, but fears now that "too many of us have not." I, on the other hand, believe this nation is better served by drawing on the knowledge gained over two centuries of existence in order to assure that protections and liberties receive equal treatment from the government, instead of relying on the reactions to the understandable fears generated by one horribly tragic event in our history.

Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, but that didn't make it legal. It was a mistake, an overreaction. In 1942, FDR ordered the internment of 100,000 Japanese-Americans in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack, and it wasn't until the 1980s that the United States government apologized for its gross overreaction. Over time, the long-term damage to our nation from diminished constitutional protections could do much more damage to our nation than an entire fleet of planes.

Only time will tell if President Bush's secret spying program is another overreaction that some future administration has to apologize for. But in the meantime, it's unconstitutional and illegal, and it has to stop. Surely those of us who feel this way shouldn't be accused of being un-American for saying so?

Scott Wright is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and an award-winning member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is a native of Cherokee County.