The Burden of Our Mistrust
March 10, 2006
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted 280 to 138 to renew the USA Patriot Act, following last week’s Senate decision to approve a partially truncated version of the act, comprising 16 of its provisions. These provisions include creating a National Security Division for the Department of Justice, implementing additional measures to protect mass transport facilities and seaports from attack, and “closing dangerous loopholes in our ability to prevent terrorist financing,” according to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Republicans in Congress were significantly in favor of renewal while Democrats were strongly opposed to it, citing the potential for an increase in leverage granted to the executive branch. Although critics reacted to the act’s implications on civil liberties, proponents, most notably President Bush, lauded the 16 approved provisions as a means of “safeguarding the civil liberties of the American people” while maintaining surveillance operations on alleged terrorists (CNN 3.07.2006).
While outcries from Democrats such as Dennis Kucinich have, for the most part, proved ineffectual to both the news media and to the Republican majority in Congress, the disconnect between what is perceived as a respect for civil liberties and what is actually the goal of the Patriot Act is growing egregiously wider.
The bottom line is that civil liberties don’t mean a damn thing since 9/11. As a country, the United States is at its most territorially vulnerable point since World War II. This means that its citizens’ expectations of their law-given freedoms must exist with boundaries in order to prioritize the safety of the nation. Civil liberties themselves have little relevance when compromised by physical danger, and the ramifications of harping on minor infringements of American “ideals” like the rights of life, liberty, and property are futile when we are not living in a philosophical vacuum. To guarantee any one of those inalienable rights is an achievement in and of itself, and as long as the purpose of the Patriot Act is to protect the lives of United States citizens, then freedoms be damned, metal detectors can occupy the space once filled by useless protest.
However, while the Patriot Act legislation presents fairly rational methods of safeguarding particularly sensitive public institutions, the current administration enforcing the act is the truly controversial element in what has evolved into a messy freedom-security debate. In theory, random bag checks at public venues and increased security in mass transport centers are a logical recommendation for preventing future terrorist attacks on Americans. In practice, however, by an overzealous, evangelistic administration that has managed to make references to 9/11 seem tragically trite in their misuse, these provisions have provoked civil liberties activists into a genuine fury.
Therefore, before we lambaste the Patriot Act for its inadequacy and hypocrisy, we must ask ourselves: in wartime, is it the policies or the policymakers who hold the burden of our mistrust?