A left-leaning look at the stories and people that build, shape, manipulate, encourage, and/or contribute to the downfall of the United States.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Talkin' Un-American

Republicans like to talk about what is un-American. From the top of the ladder on down, president to pundit, they all seem to have a bizarre fixation with trying to define "American" and "un-American." Those of you who follow current issues might have heard through the grape vine that President Bush has authorized wiretaps of Americans. The President, his press secretary, his ever-anxious lapdogs in the craft of right-wing punditry, all seem to have the same excuse: it's his Constitutional right to do so, and if you disagree you must want the terrorists to win.

This is nothing new. Once again, we the people are traitors if we question the president's authority. It's also nothing new that they lied. The Constitution doesn't give him the right to wiretap without a warrant. In fact, it explicitly says the opposite. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by quoting the fourth amendment, but for those who aren't familiar with the Constitution (like Bush, apparently), the short version is that you can't invade someone's privacy, or get a warrant to invade someone's privacy, without probable cause.

"The enemy," they argue, "could attack at any time and we need the information on their plans as soon as possible. We don't have time to get a warrant!" Ahh, what a sensible conclusion.
Too bad somebody already thought of it. That's why the president has 72 hours after he begins surveillance to obtain a warrant.

Those of you who watched the State of the Union, which just ended about 30 minutes ago saw a more nuanced defense of the wiretapping (or, if you prefer Rove's linguistic retooling of the phrase to neuter it of any negative meaning, "terrorist surveillance program"): that Bush is just doing what presidents before him have done. The exact line was:

Previous presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have.

Notice he doesn't mention which presidents? I can think of one:

Of course, that won't happen here. We live in different times; where there was an independent media during Nixon's time, there is just a mass of corporate subsidiaries who transcribe talking points. If Bush hasn't been impeached for...

• The Bush Administration's ties to Enron and Ken Lay
• The massive pre-9/11 intelligence failure which included the President not reading memos with titles like "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US"
• The Abu Gharib prisoner torture scandal
• The search for WMDs that has yielded nothing and has thus far claimed tens of thousands of lives
  

... Then he can pretty much do anything with no checks on his authority whatsoever, and certainly wiretaps are the least of our worries as a people.


But back to the original topic: what is un-American? Well, I think it's a stupid term, personally. To me it's an utterly meaningless brand word, the kind of word politicians use to coax that kneejerk response out of the masses of the ignorant.
But I'll play ball.

The right says that the opponents of the president's wiretapping authority, by even debating this issue, are giving the terrorists too much information about our activities. Un-American, they say. Now, let's assume for a moment that un-American actually means something. What would that something be? I would think it would be anything that goes against the founding principles of America.

So, with that in mind, I'm thinking that those who would be willing to sell out our essential freedoms and liberties to get themselves that needle fix of security would be the ones who are un-American.
Of course, like I said, I'm just playing along with the right-wing here, I don't really care about American and un-American. I just think that if you're going to play the game, you should at least play it right. posted by SwiftyLeZar at 10:06 PM