By By Greg McGowan, News Correspondent

Despite President Barack Obama’s ‘change’ theme that he ran his campaign on in the fall, Americans continue to support President George W. Bush’s policies, said Jeff Manza in his ‘Civil Liberties, Public Opinion, and the War on Terror’ presentation to Northeastern students Thursday.
Manza, an author and sociology professor at New York University, stressed that despite the United States’ liberalization movement since the mid-1950s, the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center consequently made Americans more open to policies enacted by Bush.
‘Some of the worst successes of the [Bush] administration’s war on terror [have] really shocked the world,’ Manza said, adding that Americans may not be as opposed to such controversial ongoing policies of the Bush administration as the rest of the world.
To put such a theory to the test, Manza said he assisted in a national telephone survey based out of the Indiana Survey Research Center in 2007. Polling 1,204 Americans, the survey showed that 72 percent of respondents supported the Patriot Act and 76 percent supported National Security Agency wiretapping.
Respondents were then asked their thoughts on national security matters other than strict policies. When questioned about the issue of profiling at airports, for example, the majority were opposed to it. Manza said the poll showed that once policies were in place, Americans started to like them.
‘These policies appear to have activated a nationalist dimension in American public opinion,’ Manza said.
Manza said the Bush administration and September 11 attacks challenged Americans’ views, growing liberalism and even the Constitution. The poll answered his original question of whether American views have welcomed back the liberalization movement that was growing pre-September 11. Americans still seem content with sticking to some of Bush’s ways at the moment, although things may be beginning to turn back to how they were, he said.
Manza said an increase in international human rights after World War II and more attention to’ human rights after Watergate and the Vietnam War had a significant impact upon the growing liberalization movement. This movement, he said, focuses on racial equality.
‘Across the board, in many different domestic spheres, opinion has liberalized,’ Manza said.
Although there had been a recent ‘triumph of liberalism,’ he noted, not everyone agrees. Former Vice President Dick Cheney was interviewed on CNN earlier this month and said that President Barack Obama’s recent national security moves, most notably the closure of Guantanamo Bay, are putting the United States at increased terrorism risk. President Obama responded by saying that he strongly disagrees with that notion. Nevertheless, Americans may side with Cheney despite Obama’s vast popularity. In Manza’s poll, 59 percent of respondents said they support military detention. Manza told the crowd of approximately 80 people that the same poll will be conducted again this year for an updated look at where opinion on such matters now stand.
For some students, the results of Manza’s research were surprising.
‘I was surprised with the results of Manza’s findings, mainly that, 6 years after 9/11, Americans continue to support the Bush Administration’s policies,’ freshman international affairs and environmental studies dual major Jordan Reichardt said.