This week's gutting of the Fourth Amendment continues the decades long erosion of that clearly written and previously well understood restriction on the government. If the Fourth Amendment can go by the wayside, having a written constitution seems to provide little or no protection -- it can be re-written by politicians and judges to eliminate rights as if they were never there in the first place.
But as disappointing as the FISA vote was, it was hardly a new disappointment. The thirty year war on drugs had already torn down most of the Fourth Amendment. Congress is now just kicking the carcass.
Long ago I learned not to expect much from democratic politicians when it came to the fourth amendment, but I'm still a democrat. Where else could I go that would make a difference?
I've always been pragmatic when it comes to politics, and Obama has hardly deflated my idealistic view of him because I've never had such a view.
Our system of government necessarily divides the country into two halves, and you've got to pick a side. Working within our side to push the issues we care about matters, but you can't ignore reality -- you've got to create a bigger half to get anything done in the US.
Unlike most of you, I'm not disappointed by Obama because I never saw him as a great savior in the first place. When I was younger, I would have railed about this much more, and argued with anyone who would listen about how we need to create an alternative to the all-too-cautious democrats. In 1988, I voted for Jesse Jackson in the primaries even though I knew he was a hopeless general election candidate because I thought Dukakis was "too corporate" and not enough of a liberal. The fact that the wrest of the country thought Dukakis was too much of a liberal didn't matter.
Looking back on my young self, it brings to mind a story
I heard about Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island. I'm pretty sure this story isn't even true, but it makes for a good parable anyway, and it make a deep impression on me when I first heard it.
The puritans who founded the Massachusetts colony took their religious theories very seriously, and Williams was considered a great theologian. He started out as one of the most puritanical of the puritans. He began to realize that a lot of the other puritans didn't understand or follow his theories, so he broke off from the main sect to start a group that was committed to the true intent of God.
But he found, within that group, that many really didn't understand, and that they were practicing what he believed were heresies. So the group got smaller and smaller over time as the heretics were cast out.
It got down to Roger Williams and his wife, the last of the true believers. But he soon realized that his wife too, didn't get it. She didn't really understand the true word of God.
He alone understood.
Then he realized that couldn't be right. So he completely changed his views -- he took up the cause of religious freedom, and when he came to America with the pilgrims, he eventually headed off to found Rhode Island , which was the first colony to allow religious freedom. The society he founded allowed diversity of opinion and did not demand followers to adhere to the one true way. Because it wasn't clear there was one.
Now it may seem that on an issue like FISA there is one true way. But many people I respect apparently disagree. There can come a point when disagreements are too great, and cohesion of a political group can't be sustained any longer. But in the US, where you have to form the bigger half of the country in order to gain power, the tolerance for diversity of opinion has to be great.