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Zachary Currie Campbell English 1102 September 26, 2013 How Does the Patriot Act Affect the Average American Citizen? Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until they have rebelled they cannot become conscious (George Orwell 1984). Have you ever had the feeling that you were being watched; have you had concern that somebody might be reading your personal mail or files. Do you ever envision a society out of 1984 or Minority Report; were everywhere you go there is a retina scan or an Identification check point. Well I am here to tell you that we could be looking towards an age of surveillance and pre arrest. It has been twelve years since a very serious event of terror struck the United States. After less than a month of fear, anger, and a lust for retaliation, Congress impatiently passed the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act is a two hundred and seventy seven page set of laws that is used to combat terrorism. There are some people that stand differently on the controversial issues that this act allows (we shall talk about this later in the essay). Although there are some people that actually participate in this matter, I think the average American citizen is more occupied with the latest football game or a celebrity meltdown. We are so blinded by materialistic things that they wouldnt realize the second coming let alone the actions of a security act. The average American should at least realize the patriot act and take a side.

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The background history I was merely seven years old when I first heard that somebody ran airplanes into buildings. I was very young and oblivious to what most people were feeling during this dark time period. As I grew older I learned more about what happened and more about those who were responsible. Of course most people know this day as nine eleven and feelings on both sides were shared. What is known of this event is that a group called Al-Qaida a radical Islamist group ran a number of airplanes into the world trade center and the pentagon. Around three thousand American citizens lost their lives in this tragic event in current history. At the current point in history many people were afraid and wanted those accountable in trouble. This is when the war on terror began. Events like this in history lead to violent wars and overbearing leaders, and history tends to repeat itself. When a nation is in the threat of invasion it is up to a leader to make the public feel better and give comforting words to bring a nation together. A video I found sponsored by CNN which shows the president at the time George Bush the second attempting to boost the morale of the American people. He talks about how America is coming together and how we shall prevail. He also talks about how our way of life and our way of freedom was under an attack. He also uses patriotic terms such as freedom, liberty, and way of life to incite people to bring justice. In another video I found on YouTube, I obtained an address were the same comforting president was declaring a war on terror. In this video he uses illustrations and analogies to describe the terrorist, their motives, and used one analogy to describe their act of terrorism to the crimes of the mob. Because most people are afraid of what was going on, many people sided along with him without really putting too much thought into the concept of a war on terror. We

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will get to that later, but it is important to use analysis and evaluation of the way president Bush used his words to convince the terror stricken people of America to help take action against those who were threatening our way of freedom. After this speech American soldiers are deployed to Afghanistan to get square with Al-Qaida. As his speech moved along, Bush starts to talk about the countries Al-Qaida recruits from and says some things to make them sound primitive and backwards. (This gives me some hint that we know a little more about our terrorist friends than what we were told) Then he talks about all the support we give to Afghanistan which leads me to an analysis that maybe there was more behind what we thought we knew (but we shall get to this later). I am only making an analysis that is in the hindsight of twelve years and no longer stricken with the grief, anger, and terror that I was like other people back then. Introduction of patriot Act As the war on terror continued on an act was passed on October twenty sixth two thousand one which was a security act to counter terrorism. I recovered a video of bush signing this video from the ABC channel website. After evaluating the first minute I saw that Bush refers to the terrorist as unreasonable and uses barbaric statements to describe them. Bush also brings up an anthrax attack possibly related to Al-Qaida and uses his statements to incite fear and anger into the public. About another minute into the video, Bush complements the police and other government workers which I noticed from the last two videos I watched. He brings up that our older laws are no longer qualified to handle these new types of modern terrorist. It appears that Bush is using terrorism and national security to justify these laws. He also uses a repetition of the word terrorist a lot, so it is necessary to analyze these things.

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