"Government should never try to control or dominate the lives of our citizens."
-George W. Bush, speaking at a fund-raiser for Congressional Republicans, according to a New York Times story today. Apparently, he "characterized Mr. Kerry as intent on expanding the size of the federal government, raising taxes and giving bureaucrats control over the lives of individuals" (article). Not that the Department of Homeland Security, PATRIOT Act, etc. would have anything to do with those things.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Oh, the irony.
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4 comments:
Sorry Jeremy, this is Mark. Not trying to post anonymously but don't have an account and too lazy to create one. That said, how exactly does a reorganization of pre-existing gov't agencies (Dept. of Homeland Security) constitute expanding size of federal gov't? I am pretty sure the Border Patrol, TSA, Coast Guard, Secret Service, Immigration Dept, and IG all existed before the Dept of Homeland Security united them in one chain of command. What's more, I guess the Patriot Act raised taxes? (I link them only because they are the second elements of your two triads.)
Annoying questions and jokes aside, I think you can find much better examples of the disjunction between Bush's "smaller gov't" rhetoric and increased spending reality. Take aim at the farm subsidies or the 400 billion Medicare prescrip drug plan rather than citing the Patriot Act bugaboo. People throw it around like it is supposed to scare you but I have trouble finding empirical examples to substantiate the apocalyptic claims of its critics. In fact, the worst part of the Act -- the system of secret search and wiretap warrants that can be granted in a secret hearing by a group of federal judges without notice to the target -- was established 25 years ago by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. What’s more, the only empirical data we have on the Patriot Act suggests it hasn’t created the civil liberties nightmare the ACLU, etc. predicted. As Jonah Goldberg (among others) pointed out, “the last report, issued over the summer, found that there were 34 "credible" allegations of abuse out of 1,037 claims made over a six-month period (note: that's allegations, not convictions). And most of these "credible" but unproven allegations involved such horrors as verbal harassment of prisoners by prison guards. That's not nice and it shouldn't happen, but it's hardly 1930s Germany.”
Mark is right about the Department of Homeland Security. It's nothing but a reorganization of existing agencies. The Coast Guard doesn't dominate anyone's life more now, under the control of Secretary Ridge, than it did before, under Secretary Mineta. I knew that the PATRIOT Act upset a few people, but it never occurred to me that radicals saw the creation of DHS as something sinister.
I'd also like to echo what Mark says about the PATRIOT Act. So many people are upset about this law, but whose life has actually been impacted by it? I, for one, have noticed absolutely no difference in my life as a result of this law, and I personally don't know anyone else whose life has been affected by it.
As far as I'm concerned, the PATRIOT Act and President Bush's other anti-terrorism measures are still far too weak. It's a shame that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was forced to terminate its Total Information Awareness program, which would have created a Grand Central Database containing a full listing of information for every individual in the country. It's also a shame that a national biometric ID has yet to be realized. It's also unfortunate that more cities have not implemented computerized face-recognition surveillance camera systems.
If we had such systems in place, we could finally feel safe and free to move about in this country, without the same level of fear of terrorist attacks. Of course, some will insist that this would make us less free somehow. I've never understood that. How am I less free because I have to flash an ID when I board an airplane? How am I less free because cameras survey the streets that I walk, able to catch a picture of the person who mugs me, so that he can't get more than a few blocks away before the police track him down? How am I less free because the government has my financial and medical information? What are they doing to do with this information—tell the world that I make flights back and forth between Chicago and Kentucky a few times a year? —that I buy a lot of chicken and rice at the grocery store? —that I take a sedative to help me fall asleep at night? Who cares?
The people who worry about privacy are people who have extramarital affairs or who look at pornography or use prostitutes—things that they shouldn't be doing in the first place. We don't help these people by enabling them to maintain their secret lives. It's better for them that they be exposed, to have an incentive to reform themselves—or to stand up against the world, if the world is wrong.
Long story short: When the time comes (and it will, I hope) that the government wants to implant RFID chips with GPS tracking in everybody's wrists, I'll be the first one lined up for the injection. I hope it happens sooner, rather than later.
I'd like to disagree, respectfully but strongly, with those who see the PATRIOT Act as something other than a significant assault on civil liberties. By breaking down the wall between executive-branch intelligence and police activities, it essentially erases a cluster of protections against federal surveillance of citizens that was established to prevent a recurrence of a wide array of abuses, ranging from the Watergate break-in to the COINTELPRO infiltration and covert operations against civil rights organizations.
Just the other day, I was reading in the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco the remarkable collection of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, who founded the Daughters of Bilitis. They obtained copies of the huge FBI records that were collected about this first lesbian political lobbying organization in the United States.
Put another way: true, the PATRIOT Act doesn't make this 1930s Germany; it doesn't - for example - categorically and constitutionally exclude a group of citizens from a central cultural ritual, legal status, or social practice (which as social psychologists showed in the 1950s tends to legitimate discrimination and violence at other levels), as certain other Bush administration initiatives have sought to do. But it does make this a bit more like 1950s America than it was before.
Oh, another thing. I almost couldn't believe I was reading, above, "The people who worry about privacy are people who have extramarital affairs or who look at pornography or use prostitutes—-things that they shouldn't be doing in the first place."
The question isn't whether a very significant fraction of Americans, and perhaps a higher proportion of federal employees who are more likely than others to have the resources needed to conceal such activities, has done at least one of these things - though even a minimal awareness of mainstream social science will quickly show that it's not much of a question at all. Nor is the question whether or not we "should be doing" these things or whether it's anyone's job to decide whether or not we should be. It is, rather, whether or not the government has the right to spy on us. We have lived, in living memory, in an America in which the federal government spies on its citizens.
As the founders put it, "Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty" (Benjamin Franklin); "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it" (Thomas Jefferson); "It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution" (James Madison).
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