Like many of you, it's hard for me to understand how a core percentage of the American people are so quick to sacrifice their constitutional rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Reflecting on the question of
why it is so, it's clear it's due in large part to Bush's framing of the war on terror as a fight between good vs. evil. Such a characterization has served to cast
both sides in absolute terms. The terrorists are pure evil, soulless creatures with no affect who seek only to wreak death and havoc upon this earth. On the flip side, those who wage war against the terrorists are not only "good," but so righteous and pure in their crusade that they can do no wrong. That is the brilliance of Bush's strategy from the beginning--casting himself as the bearer of all things good in this fight, he has convinced his followers that there is not a shred of evil in his actions. Every act, no matter how repulsive it may to our innate sense of decency, becomes "good" because it is performed by those who fight evil. How else to explain how our society has actually accepted the fact that torture is a
debatable topic? How else to explain that Scooter Libby was cast as a martyr instead of the criminal that he allegedly is?
The reality, of course, is that Bush is no saint, no matter how evil our enemies are and no matter how just he believes his means of destroying them are. His is an administration tainted from its birth. The stolen election in 2000 was the first of a multitude of sins to be committed by this cabal. Following that has been a series of offenses against Americans, from plundering their wealth to sending our soldiers unprepared into the hell of war, like sheep to the slaughter. Knowing this and armed with the truth, liberals have never bought into the myth of St. George. But his followers, from those who relish his "sunny nobility" in the media to those who live in blissful (and deliberate) ignorance of the facts, have never failed to provide a knee-jerk defense of their President.
Since President Bush confessed he ignored the law and ordered domestic spying on American citizens, Republicans have split into two camps. There are those who maintain no wrong has been committed, because a line has been drawn--between Us and Them--and any action taken to capture and destroy Them is proper and good. Then, there are those who acknowledge the gravity of the situation. Republicans like Specter, Hagel, and McCain know that the President broke the law. Yet rather than hold him accountable, they seek to absolve him of his sins. Thus, we have Specter drafting remedial legislation not to censure the Executive, but to provide cover for its lawlessness, and we have toothless hearings aimed more at sanitizing the public consciousness rather than passing true judgment on the scandal.
Those in both camps would benefit from a reading of Federalist 51, in which James Madison observed the following about the need for a system of checks and balances:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
FISA was passed as means of governmental self-control. It was passed by Republicans and Democrats alike who realized that whoever occupied the Oval Office would be surrounded not by a halo, but by temptation to abuse that great power bestowed upon them by the public trust.
We are a nation of laws precisely because we are governed by men, by those whose judgment is fallible and whose priorities do not always coincide with those of the American people. And in our fight against terrorists, we cannot cloak our leaders in shrouds of immunity while they commit grave offenses against us; to do so would be to masquerade men as angels, Presidents as kings, and the Constitution as a defunct document rather then the Supreme Law of the Land.