Surveillance measures allowed under the Patriot Act and other post-Sept. 11 legislation serve to enrich our liberty, not hinder it, John Ashcroft said in Springfield on Thursday.

Ashcroft, a former U.S. attorney general and Missouri governor, was in town to address the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association at its Law Day U.S.A. luncheon.

During a 20-minute speech, he told a packed banquet hall at the Doubletree Hotel on North Glenstone how the rule of law served to enrich life in America.

"Why is it that America is the best location, the best geography, the best community on the face of the earth?" he said. "Because we have a central core value that this fundamentally imparted. It is the core value of liberty."

The most important characteristic Americans share, Ashcroft said, is the "value of freedom."

He went on to recount how he first came to hear of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks --as he was flying to Milwaukee --and the scramble to secure the country in the days that followed.

"There's been a great deal of debate ... regarding my involvement in how we were prepared to defend and sustain freedom," he said. "If you don't like what you get, you better change what you're doing, so the Patriot Act was a means for us to increase our level of activity so we did not suffer a recurrence of what had transpired."

He singled out provisions in the act that allow "roving wiretap" surveillance of suspected terrorists. The measure came under intense scrutiny in the days after the Patriot Act was enacted.

"The roving wiretap made it possible for the court to authorize surveillance of a person, not the surveillance of a particular instrument," he said. "In retrospect, it seems like such common sense."

Ashcroft's broader message was one he's delivered many times over: The Patriot Act safeguards freedoms rather than eroding them.

He dismissed the notion that it was the role of the country to balance security and individual freedoms.

"Liberty and freedom are together in this category of core values that I don't believe is ever to be given up merely for the balance against something else," he said. "The purpose of security is to enrich and sustain liberty. That's what security is all about."

The speech addressed the theme of this year's Law Day, "The Rule of Law: Foundation for Communities of Opportunity and Equity."

Originally established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958, Law Day takes place on or around May 1 each year. It is, in Eisenhower's words, "a day of national dedication to the principle of government under law."

Each year, the SMBA holds a luncheon for Law Day, conferring a number of awards on bar members, judges, and local children who've won a variety of contests.