Civil Liberties Advocates Fear Boston Marathon Fallout

May push the country to sacrifice freedom for security promises

MADISON – With that first bomb blast in Boston Monday, the United States' stable, albeit fragile, sense of security took a terrible beating.

The pandemonium, the scream of sirens, the heartbreaking cries of the badly hurt and dying, the terror. All are again seared into the American consciousness.

But the bombs that blew up the Boston Marathon,  may have claimed another victim beyond the three people killed and more than 170 injured:  Basic individual freedoms.

One civil liberties observer believes the Bill of Rights can't take another assault in the balancing act of securing the homeland and protecting the values that made America the Land of the Free.

Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Northampton, Mass.-based Bill of Rights Defense Committee, asserts the United States in the past decade-plus has passed Benjamin Franklin's maxim, that, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Buttar fears the latest apparent terrorist attack on U.S. soil will push the country further into a nation that prefers security over fundamental rights.