Imagine a society where free speech is just a mere phrase with little significance.

Imagine a society where people are incarcerated simply on suspicion, with no evidence of wrongdoing.

Imagine a society where the government has the ability to conduct secret searches of private property, with no warrant, but merely on suspicion.

Imagine a society in which the government can have quick access to private medical, educational, and financial records without probable cause and without judicial review.

Places that come to mind are usually countries ruled by ruthless dictators such as Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein.

Yet, it is our own country that is guilty of those civil liberties violations under the Uniting and Strengthening America By Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism, simply referred to as the Patriot Act.

No congressman would have in his right mind voted against a bill entitled the Patriot Act six weeks after our country was attacked on Sept. 11.

But what many of them did not know, and what the general American public most certainly did not know, was this bill was a carefully mediated move by United States Attorney General John Ashcroft to massively expand his power and the power of the Department of Justice.

Under the new, broader definition of terrorism in the Patriot Act, any person who partakes in an event that is dangerous to human life is a terrorist and will have his citizenship stripped, regardless of his place of birth.

For example, if you attend a peace protest and by some stroke of bad luck, it gets a little out of hand, rocks are thrown, and somebody gets hit in the head, you could be tried as a terrorist under this law.

More than 1,000 peaceful people whose only offense was having a Muslim name have been thrown in jail, and Ashcroft does not have to tell them or the media why they are there, only that "they have the potential of posing a threat to our country."

This judgment comes from a man who lost his Missouri Senate race in 2000 to the wife of a dead candidate on the ballot.

This comes from a man who incarcerated an Arab from Michigan under "secret evidence" for more than a year because it turns out he purchased a hunting rifle and Ashcroft put the words "rifle" and "Arab" together and assumed terror.

Far be it for Arab people to go up north and hunt like the rest of us Michiganders do.

It is not only immigrants who are under heavy surveillance under this act. Natural born citizens like you and me are affected, too.

Suppose you donated money to a Lebanese charity to build a preschool for children.

Under the Patriot Act, you could be thrown in jail or denaturalized.

Using Ashcroft's wisdom, everybody should know all Lebanese people are terrorists.

So if you give money to help poor children in that country, then you are indirectly supporting terror and should have your citizenship stripped away from you. How pathetic.

Even a powerful republican like James Sensenbrenner, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, admits the Act is a blatant violation of civil rights, and questions Ashcroft's motives.

It is one thing for Ashcroft to prevent terror, but it is a whole other thing for Ashcroft to usurp massive amounts of power and keep the country under constant paranoia and fear.

Sensenbrenner admits hardly any legislator actually read the several hundred-page Act six weeks after 9/11, and instead assumed any bill with the title Patriot Act couldn't be too bad.

Ironically, it seems as if the Patriot Act is anything but patriotic, anything but what this country stands for. Instead of being innocent until proven guilty, we are now guilty until proven innocent.

You can have your citizenship stripped from you for supporting a "terrorist group" even if you knew nothing about its ties to any terror. Furthermore, not every group Ashcroft labels as a "terrorist group" is actually one.

He is usually wrong, and he might apologize privately, but that is only after every major TV network in the country has put that group on the evening news.

And you better believe the revenue and reputation of those groups plummet quickly, even if their name has been "cleared."

Under the Patriot Act, government agents can now monitor the books or other materials you read and check out from the library.

They also can break into your home when you aren't there and not tell you for days on end.

In addition, more immunity is granted to those agents who, with the approval of high ranking officials, conduct illegal surveillance, regardless of the intellect of those officials.

How bad is it? Under the Patriot Act it would have been legal for Nixon's wire-tappers to spy on the Democratic Party in Watergate.

Ashcroft is abusing power, and the Patriot Act removes checks and balances to prevent him from doing so.

We give terrorists something to cheer about when we no longer choose to enforce the Bill of Rights here.

People are allowed to have differing opinions in America; it is one of the things that make this country great.

By kicking a student out of high school for wearing a George Bush Is a Terrorist T-shirt, we act no better than Saddam would if somebody wore anti-Saddam clothing.

Bush's first term as President is more than a year from being over, and we need to make sure it is his only term.

Otherwise, Ashcroft and the Patriot Act won't go anywhere, nor will the notion that the even more dangerous Patriot Act II be put into law.

Farhan Bhatti is the Communications Director of the MSU College Democrats and is the Public Relations Director of Students for Dean. He can be reached at bhattifa@msu.edu.