Thursday, June 06, 2013

An Opportunity For Us All

When partisan Republicans start crowing about the findings of dyed in the wool liberals, it is not only time to take notice, but also to pause and reflect.

Criticizing the current President's policy on drones was all the rage a few weeks ago. A frequent refrain Republicans used to make Democrats squirm was "are you going to be comfortable with future President's executing this power"?

Echoes of the past never die.

That same argument was used by civil libertarians when the Patriot Act was created by the Bush Administration. We'll have to wait for a Republican to start the drone killin' before we can address the slide of that slippery slope, but the precipice of the one created in the last decade, at the height of the "we must do everything can to protect ourselves hysteria" has arrived.

All the participants are performing the usual partisan reels, but instead of focusing on the smugness of those who supported much worse less than a decade ago or the sudden non-chalance of those who once deeply care about things like the Fourth Amendment (to be fair, my personal observation is there has been more of the first than the second. After all, the source here is deeply liberal Glenn Greenwald), we should instead turn to the words written by Charlie Harper three days ago.
The assumptions behind most recent political debate have been “my side is good and can handle power. Your side is evil and should not have it.” The current scandals give Republicans a solid chance to change the debate. It should no longer about who has the power of government, but should government have this much power over us at all?
But replace Republicans with Americans, because today shows government restraint is not a partisan issue.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny thing about rights and such, after 2003 I pretty much gave up on the idea that I'd have privacy of any sort. It didn't matter if I thought I had anything to hide or not, that wouldn't be my decision.

I used to joke with Nita in 2006 that the NSA was listening to our conversations and we'd laugh that some where in a basement some poor soul had to keep up with the number of times we called our candidates "dumbasses".

Unless we all jump off the digital grid, there is always going to be someone collecting something.

Am I shocked to read about the NSA, nope. Anyone who thought President Obama was some kind of dove or civil liberty champ was really wishing for a pony to ride.

Jules

griftdrift said...

But...but...but he's a socialist communist on the side of the terrorist master of tyranny while simulatenously incompent autocrat who can't control his own team