Exhuming McCarthy

I'll freely admit, I never liked the guy. I didn't care for his father either. But my distrust of him grows deeper with each passing day. There are plenty of pragmatic reasons to dislike this administration, but the most significant one is that our president believes himself to be above the law. Worse than that, he has been systematically employing this assumed and unconstitutional status to illegally spy on the citizens of this country, thus weakening the very freedoms that he so often claims to be defending.

My first grave concerns about the administration's lack of concern with legal protocol and human rights came with the Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib fiascos. There, the administration demonstrated its willingness to indulge in detention without charges and torture. It was clear enough, to anyone paying attention, that the administration was willing to indulge in the very practices that we, as a nation, define ourselves against--the very practices that were common in the USSR under Stalin's rule.

I was raised during the final years of the Cold War. During that time, the state of civil liberties in the USSR was every civics teacher's favorite example of what the US was not. "In Russia," they would say, "you have no freedom. There are secret police. Your every movement is watched."

There's an old joke that says, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching you." Now that line is sounding a lot less funny and a lot more like good advice. The president has already admitted to and proffered a lame defense the NSA's warrentless eavesdropping) on US citizens, facilitated by some telecommunications companies who were all-too-willing to hand over private customer data without a subpoena.

Perhaps our president has a juvenile conception of freedom, seeing it merely as protection from physical harm. For anyone who has given the matter thought, it is clear that physical protection is only one concern among many. In fact, at this point, I would venture to say that we are, collectively, in as much danger from our own government as we are from external forces. We have rules here. Our leaders are not exempt from them. Informing, in secret, certain members of congress (the names of which you refuse to divulge) that you are going to break the law does not make the law null and void. It merely proves premeditation.

It's often said that those who criticize are obliged to offer solutions. I'm glad to do so. If you want to live under the rule of law rather than the whims of despots, it is essential to support organizations that attempt to keep would-be dictators and their cronies honest. You can compile your own list, depending upon how you see your beliefs best represented. For me it includes the EFF, the ACLU, and Amnesty International. Even more important, it is also our democratic responsibility, when confronted with such clear evidence of crookedness, to vote the offenders out of office. The chance for that is coming soon, and I believe it is of the utmost importance.