Much has been written in the past twenty-four hours about yesterday’s report that the NSA was spying on Americans in the United States in the wake of the September 11th attacks, activity which President Bush admitted today he personally authorized.
Michelle Malkin seems to be leading the group of conservative bloggers who are more outraged over the fact that the New York Times would dare to publish this story than they are that the government was blithly ignoring the Fourth Amendment.
This is by no means the only take that those on the right have on this story, though. Stephen Bainbridge, for one, has a very different reaction:
Some will say that we need to make trade-offs between liberty and security. But liberty has a price and taking risks is the price we all have to pay if liberty is to be preserved.
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” - Patrick Henry
Of the Founders who pledged “their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor” as signers to the Declaration of Independence, five were captured as traitors and tortured before they died; twelve had their homes ransacked and burned; two lost their sons in the Revolutionary War; another had two sons captured; and nine died from wounds or the hardship of the war. But too many want to trade their sacrifices away for a mess of security pottage.
It’s enough to make me think about making a Christmas donation to the ACLU.
Meanwhile, Jon Henke makes an excellent point about those on the right who are presently justifying what only seems to me to be entirely outrageous behavior on the part of the Administration:
Naturally, many people will jump to defend the administration, pointing out that, you know, terrorists and evildoers and national security and what’re you, some kind of traitor who wants another 9/11? They’ll continue making that argument until, say, Hillary Clinton ascends to the White House and it occurs to them that, hey, maybe giving the Executive Branch near-unlimited power to reinterpret and/or flaunt the laws might not be such a great idea after all.
Having your own ox gored by power tends to do that to a person in a way that goring other people with power doesn’t.
And, as Jon goes on to point out, when it was Bill Clinton in power and the domestic surveillance program was called Eschelon, the right was leading the charge against a President who wanted to enhance the domestic spying activities of the NSA. Personally, I don’t think we should trust any President with the kind of unlimited discretion that some on the right seen eager to give George W. Bush in fighting the War on Terror.
The idea of the government being able to listen in on its citizens private conversations at whim, without first having to obtain a search warrant, is prescisely what the Fourth Amendment was supposed to prevent. By authorizing these searches and now seemingly justifying them, the Bush Administration is setting a dangerous precedent for the future.
