A Pilgrim’s Digression

Republicans are spitting mad, today. In the wake of the elections in Iraq last week, the President has been dealt two setbacks. Last Friday, a bi-partisan group of Senators used the filibuster to block renewal of the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act expires December 31.

Also last week, the New York Times reported on “a domestic eavesdropping program,” as The Washington Post called it. At a time when he ought to have been riding high on the successful elections in Iraq, the President has had to vigorously defend himself and the powers he has taken unto himself since 9/11.

His defenders in the Conservative media have also worked up a good foam over what they see as a stab in the back. On his program for Friday December 16, Rush Limbaugh made good use of the slippery slope fallacy, suggesting that because the Patriot Act will expire on December 31, the year 2006 may be a bumper year for terrorist activity. Blaming “yellow-bellied Republicans” for the defeat of the Patriot Act, Limbaugh said,

You know what just gets re-erected? The Gorelick wall! The same thing that prevented us from being able to “connect the dots” prior to 9/11 goes back into effect on January 1st, because that provision’s dead, the provision that permits the sharing of grand jury information that involves foreign intelligence or counter-intelligence with federal law enforcement, federal intelligence, protective immigration, national defense or national security officials. That’s gone. So now anything learned by one agency can’t be shared with another.

“The Gorelick wall” is a reference to supposed Clinton-era restraints on the powers of the FBI and CIA. Conservatives are still blaming Clinton for everything, and he’s been out of office for half a decade now.

As reported in a Washington Post story on the subject, Bush Calls Blockage of Patriot Act Inexcusable, the President is quoted as using some pretty high-flown rhetoric himself: “In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment.”

These people are really exercised over this issue. The way Bush talks, we can expect a nuclear bomb to be detonated in Washington come January 1, 2006, because the FBI and CIA won’t be allowed to wiretap the phones of U.S. citizens without a warrant.

And speaking of wiretaps, that issue is the other irritant in the eye of the Leader of the Free World. Republicans like Limbaugh are whining that the liberal media cabal just can’t bear for the good news about Iraq to be in the papers more than a few hours. Thus they have to cook up some meaningless story about the Bush administration “secretly” wiretapping international calls to and from the United States.

On his radio program, Limbaugh based his entire rant about this issue on the irrelevant fact that there was nothing “secret” about the wiretaps. Jay Rockefeller knew about the wiretaps, Limbaugh reported angrily, how could these wiretaps therefore be “secret?” Meanwhile, he barely touched on the underlying Liberal argument about this power the President is exercising unapologetically: it may well be unconstitutional, even in a time of war. And it may especially be unconstitutional in a time of war that may never end.

I make no secret of the fact that I side with the civil libertarians on these issues. I think the unchecked power of the Executive Branch is far more dangerous to our free society than any terrorist.

After 9/11, there was a lot of speechifying about how the terrorists would never change our lives, about how American freedom would triumph over terrorist oppression. Now, all we hear, day in and day out, is “9/11 changed everything.”

Indeed it did change everything, and in ways no one will admit. The terrorists desired global war: we gave it to them. The terrorists desired that Americans would live in fear, and so we do. The terrorists wished that Americans would begin to relinquish their freedom to a usurping Government, and so we have.

This is a war without end. I don’t think Americans realize that whatever powers the President usurps from Congress and the people are powers that may not be lain down again in our lifetime, if ever. There’s an old axiom Conservatives used to live by: once a new tax is instituted, it is never repealed. Much the same is true of power. Once a man has had a little taste of power, he is unlikely to relinquish it willingly.

We saw this stubborn unwillingness today in the President’s angry denunciation of those who would restore the balance of power in our government.

In his last press conference of the year, a reporter asked him, “I wonder if you can tell us today, sir, what, if any, limits you believe there are or should be on the powers of a President during a war, at wartime? And if the global war on terror is going to last for decades, as has been forecast, does that mean that we’re going to see, therefore, a more or less permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive in American society?”

And he replied testily:

First of all, I disagree with your assertion of “unchecked power.” Hold on a second, please. There is the check of people being sworn to uphold the law, for starters. There is oversight. We’re talking to Congress all the time, and on this program, to suggest there’s unchecked power is not listening to what I’m telling you. I’m telling you, we have briefed the United States Congress on this program a dozen times. To say “unchecked power” basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the President, which I strongly reject.

Yet if the President can essentially circumvent not just the laws of the land, but our own Constitution, in the name of an ephemeral “security,” what else is that but the power of the dictator?

As Matthew Yglesias remarks at TPMCafé, in an article titled Unlimited Government, “…ex post facto briefings [of Congress] aren’t a check on Presidential power. Nor is the Presidential oath a check if the sole judge of whether or not the oath is being upheld is the President himself.”

Much as at other times during this President’s administration, we are expected to accept on faith that he and his people are doing the right thing, because they took an oath. I am sorry, but it is not in my nature to trust.

It’s a crazy, mixed up world for this old Conservative, when the Liberals come off as the ones trying to hold government power in check. Ten years ago, I would have scoffed if you’d told me I’d be writing today about a Republican President for whom I could never vote, and whose good intentions I genuinely fear.