First off, I have finally created a politics category on my blog. It is about two years overdue. The reason I created it today was that I saw a very good Ask Slashdot today about privacy laws around the world. Reading through the comments, I saw some great (or at least to me they were great) arguments against laws that give government overreaching powers to spy on its citizens.
I’m not just some paranoid nut. I find that legislation such as the US Patriot Act (the parts of which I am aware) are unconstitutional. I will agree that terrorism is a problem, but comments like this one posted by LBU.Zorro emphasize appropriately that the sacrifice freedoms and rights does not make all of the problems go away:
Even if you give up every right you ever have and become a slave to your government, you will not have made terrorism impossible, it will still be able to happen, and the side effect is that you will be living in fear like you wouldn’t believe every damned day of your life, because that guy you just cut up? Might call the ‘Witch / Terrorist buring hotline’ with your license plate. You run a sucessful business? Your competitor can get the competative edge, whilst you are in solitary for planning to blow up a turnpike.
You need to ask yourself, IF these actions are taken will it solve the problem? Could you think of a way of doing it anyway? The answer is almost invariably NO, it wouldn’t solve anything, but it would harm you. Remember the old saw: Cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I would much rather have my freedoms with the risk that something bad may happen than have a pseudo-secure feeling without my freedoms, while still having that risk that something bad may happen. The reason the Patriot Act got passed is that it was easy for a majority of Americans to swallow the lie that the Patriot Act would not affect them negatively and it would make all of the evil in the world disappear. It was easy for the masses to wrap their heads around the idea that it would only be used against terrorists, and that no honest Americans would ever fall victim to abuse of the Patriot Act. As I have heard and read it reported in the news, the Patriot Act easily lends itself to abuse.
While I don’t have anything to quote specifically for this post, IIRC the Patriot Act gives the government the power to hold someone indefinitely if there is any reason to believe that person is connected to terrorism that has or has not yet happened. While that person is being held by the government, the right to legal counsel or to trial by a jury of peers is nonexistent. To many people, that probably doesn’t sound like a bad deal for a terrorist. Here’s the kicker: someone held under the Patriot Act for suspicion of terrorism has not been convicted of anything, including terrorism. That person is only suspected. Even suspected terrorists should have a right to due process, no matter how ludicrous our legal system is at times (but that’s a post for another time).
So, yeah, I would like legislation like the Patriot Act would get a nice section in US history books, perhaps under the section of the worst President ever read article below. I would like freedom from fear of persecution just for thinking differently. I would like to not have to worry that my government might arrest me and hold me prisoner for no reason whatsoever. I would like to think that Orwell wasn’t Nostradamus.
Update: I finally found the article I wanted to link to about President Bush being the worst President ever.
*Yanks soapbox out from under Mark* Ok, I don’t know that the Patriot Act does what you say it does. I’ve paid more attention to the part where the government can spy on us more easily, though. I think their is a certain extent to which giving up freedoms is ok. It is not a terribly great extent, though. We’ve got to remember that the Patriot Act is not the first overreaction to dangerous times. I would point you to the Alien and Sedition Acts during the shaky post-Revolutionary War era and law enacted and Executive Orders issued during the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and the Cold War. The trend will turn around. As a matter of fact, Congress is about to renew the Patriot Act, and the new version is already less annoying than the old
This knee-jerk Bush-bashing has to stop, though. Bush did not pass the Patriot Act, Congress did. Bi-partisanly. And IIRC, the idea for it did not come from the the administration in the first place. In any event, the objections to the Patriot Act do not just come from the left.
Also, conservatives care about civil liberties, too, so I don’t want to hear any sanctimonious liberal crap from any of you.
By the way, the post you linked to is just plain stupid. I thought you’d want to know. *Tosses soapbox aside*
I will concede that the Patriot Act is loathed by both sides of the spectrum, and that it was passed into law as an overreaction to a terrorist event. I have not read anything more about the new Patriot Act other than it is supposed to be less intrusive than the first.
My Bush-bashing is not knee-jerk. I haven’t liked his platform and what he has done since the 2000 campaign. And if Gore (in 2000) or Kerry (in 2004) won, I probably wouldn’t have liked what they would have done much, either. Neither of these candidates really did anything for me. These last two elections appeared to me as sort of a joke, and they were the first two elections in which I felt I had anything invested. I hope that the 2008 elections have candidates in both major parties that I can respect.
One last thing, while I believe that both liberals and conservatives care about civil liberties, I think that the party in power (whichever party it is) suffers from tunnel vision about the country’s problems, or it has some strange insight into the country’s problems that it does not feel like sharing with the public. Either way, the party in power always seems to make at least a few decisions that just are not sensible. I suppose that is just a problem with being in power.
Here is some news about the new Patriot Act. As you can see, there is no unanimous view one way or the other from either party.
The ACLU has a page dedicated to reforming the Patriot Act. The page lists some interesting myths. One I find very interesting is the second to last one on the list: Critics are irresponsibly calling for the repeal of the Patriot Act. I would guess that there are probably some necessary provisions of the Patriot Act, but I would also guess that more revision of the Patriot Act is necessary to protect us, not only from the terrorists, but also from the government.