For the past couple of days, I’ve been reading about the President’s secret, warrantless wiretap searches of U.S. citizen. Obviously, I thought Mr. Bush crossed the line long ago with torture and secret prisons and trumped up allegations about the “grave and gathering threat” posed to the U.S. by Iraq. But, obviously, not everybody agrees. So, I thought I’d check with a conservative friend of mine. Surely, I thought, this “don’t tread on me” libertarian/conservative would be troubled by Bush’s latest. Nope, he told me. We’re at war. I keep being amazed at what people will swallow in the name of war.
I suggested to him that our difference in opinion might be due to my sense that the War on Terror(ists/ism) ™ is more of a metaphorical war, akin to the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. He responded:
Tell that to the families of the 911 dead and the mad mullahs who preach that killing Americans is a one-way ticket to paradise. Fighting this enemy
metaphorically will be the end of the USA.
I responded:
I’m sure the families of those involved in drug related deaths and the families of those who died from poverty-related factors would be mad at me for not viewing the War on Drugs and the War on Povert as “real” wars either.
I just don’t think the religious fundamentalists have much power to hurt too many people directly. Their real power is to make us afraid enough to hurt ourselves.
I wouldn’t have mentioned that exchange here, except that when scanning the Indy Star headlines, I saw an article about
a Memorial held for those who died homeless and executions of men who killed 9 people in drug-related crimes. So, back to back, we have the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. All of those people are just as dead as the folks who died in 9/11. I’m not trying to minimize any of this loss of life. But none of it is sufficient reason to give unchecked power to one man, no matter what office he was elected to. The world is a dangerous place. Forfeiting our liberties will not make us much safer. I think we have to stop acting out of fear and learn to live with some risk.
If our enemy was specific, such that it could actually be defeated, I’d be less concerned about wiretaps and whatnot. We could give the President extraordinary powers and be comfortable that, like Cincinnatus he would renounce those powers once the job was done. But when you’re fighting an improper noun like terrorism or poverty or drugs, you might make progress, but you’re never going to be finished. I don’t think our Republic can tolerate concentrated power in the hands of one branch of government for an indefinite period of time. Fortunately, Madison designed our government so that the ambition of the men in one branch of government would work against the ambition of the men in another branch. So, I think we’ll see the Congress assert its authority against the President. The results might be ugly. But they’re necessary.
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