They came to the old church in Coral Gables to relive the oft-forgotten spirit of a time celebrated every year in the United States. A time when patriotism meant riotous debate and dissent, when taverns shuddered with political foment, when bestselling books urged people to lash out and topple the government.

So in the spirit of 1776, they gathered Friday to spark a movement of public discourse, particularly about the meaning of liberty and patriotism in the United States of America today.

''We're here to find a way to restore the art to democratic conversation,'' said Bobbie Brinegar, president of the League of Women Voters of Miami-Dade County. ``We felt that patriotism is more than agreeing with president.''

And so the first Liberty Circle began.

The League of Women Voters -- a nonpartisan group founded 83 years ago to educate women, who were then going to the polls for the first time, in public affairs -- plans to begin holding them around the country.

The goal, according to the 40 participants, is to increase debate in America at a time when the government is trying to stifle dissent and the fight against terrorism is eroding civil liberties.

Friday's discussion centered on a single scenario that incited passion and polemic on what it means to be American.

If an invading army were taking over, which five of these 10 freedoms would you keep -- and which would you give up -- if you had to choose: speech, press, assembly, religion, the right to bear arms, the right to legal counsel, the right to jury trial, protection from self incrimination, protection from cruel and unusual punishment and protection from unreasonable searches and seizures?

The group divided into five circles and had 15 minutes to decide -- unanimously -- which ones were most important to democracy.

And then the haggling began.

The exercise was meant to highlight the rough-and-tumble effort that brought the Declaration of Independence and Constitution into existence.

''We somehow have this idea that the Declaration of Independence somehow sprung fully formed from Thomas Jefferson's head,'' said Warren Goldstein, chairman of the history department at Hartford University in Connecticut.

''No, it had to do with folks like you transported back 227, 228 or 229 years ago,'' he said.

``In 1776, you could not go into a coffee house or gather with people, and not be arguing about liberties and politics. Thomas Paine's Common Sense was a bestseller.''

The scene at the Coral Gables Congregational Church was not quite as raucous as a Boston pub of that time. It didn't end in a drunken brawl or musket fire.

In Circle 4, the debate swung politely this way and that way, like a genteel version of 12 Angry Men.

With everyone coming from similar spheres of ideology -- anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-Ashcroft -- the internal vitriol remained at a minimum.

Free speech was the first freedom chosen by four of the six in the circle.

Steven Wetstein, a volunteer for Amnesty International, topped his list with protection against cruel and unusual punishment. ''Two things that completely degrade society are torture and capital punishment,'' he said.

No one argued, and it quickly became clear that the hard part was going to be deciding which rights to give up. Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, president of the Greater Miami ACLU, developed a strategy: ``Which ones do we keep so we can fight to get the other ones back?''

Taking this philosophy to its reasonable end, she proposed a strategy that sounded bizarre coming from the local head of the American Civil Liberties Union: just keep the guns, fight off the invaders, and get all the other rights back.

That idea didn't catch on. Instead, the group decided that the most powerful tools against oppression are speech and the right to assemble. Plus, if unreasonable search and seizure were banned, you could hide your guns.

But soon the group members were frustrated that they had to rate their liberties at all.

Could they really tolerate losing the right to a trial by one's peers? Or being forced to sign a confession? Or to give up freedom of religion -- right here in a church, no less?

''This is an exercise that John Ashcroft might have given us,'' Wetstein said. ``I say, we as a group completely object to this exercise.''

Which is what they did. They still picked five freedoms for the organizer's sake, but their official response was ``peaceful resistance.''

Of the other circles, all included free speech on their list.

None included the right to bear arms, which dismayed Carmen Matos, a executive recruiter from Coral Gables, who grew up in Cuba as Fidel Castro was coming to power.

''If you went through what we went through, if they take the guns away from you, you just sit there,'' she said.

``I say, why die for your country? Why not fight for your country?''