MISSOULA — Steven Shapiro, the top lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, feels the tide shifting.

Immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans relaxed their collective guard in one area their constitutional rights while raising it elsewhere, as part of the effort to stem global terrorism.

“Can you imagine us sitting here 10 years ago and having a conversation where we talked about government torture, about kidnappings and forced disappearances, our government locking people away for years on end without charges or a trial?” said Shapiro, who is in Missoula for the Montana ACLU’s annual membership meeting. “A massive program of warrantless surveillance that violates the Constitution?”

Those actions, the result of Bush administration decisions now stamped with the imprimatur of legitimacy by the Patriot Act, constitute a sea change in a country long recognized for its devotion to human rights.

“This was a sea change that was not demanded as a response to 9/11,” Shapiro said.

Now, however, the tide may be moving in the other direction.

“This is a series of tactics that has violated at a basic level who we are,” Shapiro said. “Americans are described not by race or by creed, but by a set of values. Those values have been subverted, and I think people are becoming weary of it. We don’t want to be known as torturers.”

Unfortunately, while becoming known as torturers, the United States has also, in Shapiro’s opinion, made itself less safe.

“We’ve taken all these actions and at the end of the day, it’s not going to make the country any more secure,” Shapiro said.

Even so, Shapiro is hopeful that the cyclical nature of politics and public opinion will sweep aside the Bush administration’s dark undercurrent of secrecy and wholesale invasion on the privacy of Americans.

“To work for the ACLU, you have to be something of an optimist,” Shapiro said with a laugh. “You’ve got to take the long view and remember where we were in 1920, when our organization was just starting. I really do believe if you will talk to the American people and not down to them, by and large we will come out all right.”

That might be particularly true of Montanans, Shapiro said.

“Montana has really been taking a leading role in some of the things that we’ve been working for nationally,” Shapiro said. “I think part of it is that sense of individualism, the feeling that we don’t need the government telling us how to conduct every aspect of our lives.”

Shapiro noted Montana’s reluctance to go along with the federal REAL ID program, an effort, among other things, to standardize identifications across the states. The program has been postponed until 2011 in the hope that more states will cooperate.

“REAL ID would not have stopped 9/11,” Shapiro noted. “Those guys didn’t present driver’s licenses to anybody.”

Montana has also been active on the medical marijuana front, calling for troop withdrawals in Iraq and opposing the Patriot Act.

“I think the power of an organization like ours is that we get people who are willing to flex their constitutional muscles,” said Scott Crichton, executive director of the Montana ACLU. “The message that I’d like to give is that your rights atrophy if you don’t use them.”

The ACLU has a long history of flexing its constitutional muscle, often in ways that produce strange bedfellows that cross political, racial and economic spectrums.

“We understand that people aren’t going to agree with us every time,” Shapiro said. “We think long and hard about the issues that we take on, but once we’ve decided, we’re willing to take the criticism that comes along with them.”

Take, for instance, the ACLU’s opposition to the death penalty, which has put it at odds with some law-and-order groups that think the punishment deters crime. The ACLU is undeterred, in part because it’s becoming increasingly clear that innocent people have been put to death in this country.

“We are virtually alone in the industrial world in continuing to impose the death penalty,” Shapiro said of the United States. “You can’t be a great country and continue to behave this way.”

Shapiro said the ACLU has built a reputation for principled and credible advocacy. The truth of that, he said, is when critics of the organization turn to it in times of need.

“And we welcome them,” he said. “The only ideology we have is a commitment to the principles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That makes for some strange bedfellows, but frankly, it’s a sign that we’re doing our job.”

Reporter Michael Moore: 523-5252 or mmoore@missoulian.com