Domestic Spying and the Fear Factor
George W. Bush, although claiming to spy on Americans with our best interests at heart, is doing exactly what the Founding Fathers feared most
 

January 4 2006
Counterbias.com
Steve Horowitz
 

George Bush is going to great lengths lately to appear belligerently steadfast in his defense of the NSA's domestic spying. "The enemy is calling somebody and we want to know who they're calling and why," he said Monday. Logical enough. Except that by not going through the FISA court, he's let his fingers do the trampling all over the Constitution.

Bush's conservative apologists angrily respond (they're always so angry!) that most Americans, including Democrats, support the administration's gang-rape of our civil liberties. (Puzzling, as conservatives theoretically oppose the expansion of big government and its powers. [Although no more puzzling, I suppose, than their abandonment of fiscal responsibility as a conservative principle.]) But what the apologists overlook is that most Americans once supported racial segregation and withholding the vote from women. So "the popular will" doesn't matter as much as they'd like. (If it did, Al Gore would be president.)

Bush is an MBA, not a constitutional scholar. And since companies have the right to monitor employee emails and phone calls, he figures he should be equally unrestricted with the citizens of the company --  I mean country -- he's running.

But that's not the way it works. George Bush, with no sense of -- or respect for -- American history, fails to understand the main theme underlying the creation of our nation and of our governing charter. And that theme is fear. Fear of the abuse of power.

Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Washington and the rest of the Founding Fathers knew that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Having had their fill of kings, they feared too much power accruing to the one man in charge of the executive branch. So they made sure that each branch of government had some power of restraint over the others -- the Constitution's justifiably celebrated "checks and balances." This system was not meant to be dependent on our faith in the judgment and good intentions of the occupier of the Oval Office at any given moment.

Which is the point that Bush and his fascist-forward-leaning defenders miss.

Forget everything you know about George Bush. Imagine that he's honest, decent, humble, thoughtful and sincerely committed to the safety and well-being of every American. Imagine, even, that the warrantless spying he authorized after 9/11 -- and then, in 2004, denied -- actually, somehow, made us safer.

It wouldn't matter. He would still be in violation -- impeachably, one can only hope -- of the law.

This is not a question of presidential power in time of war. (For one thing, the Constitution says only Congress can declare war, and it hasn't. Not on Iraq, not on terrorism. [Wars on crime, drugs, poverty and terrorism don't count anyway; none will ever end, and we can't extend wartime powers forever.) It's a question of whether our laws apply equally to all people, and to all presidents.

The Founding Fathers did not mean for the Constitution to apply one way to presidents who are trustworthy -- again, let's pretend Bush is -- and another way to presidents who aren't. They knew that, most of the time, it's impossible to tell the difference until it's too late. They wanted a tyranny-proof system. One that would protect us not just from the abuse of power, but from the threat, the temptation, of the abuse of power.

Bush does not understand that, or care. To him, the problem lies with the revelation of the crime, not the crime itself. (The sociopath's typical justification, yes, but not a valid one.) He wants us to trust him. He thinks of himself, as George Lakoff has described, as the strong father, protecting the weak women and children in his family. (That's us.)

(Or, to return to an earlier analogy, he thinks he's the wise and stern CEO and we're his sheep-like, focusless employees.)

You'll note that when it comes to protecting our security in ways that would actually affect people's lives -- post-Katrina assistance, bird flu preparedness, bringing down the deficit -- Bush comes up woefully short, time after time. That's because constantly waving the red flag of terrorism in our faces has so far kept the citizenry and the press cowed and compliant, giving his neocon puppetmasters a free hand to pursue their demented dreams.

No, I don't trust George Bush. But even if I did, I wouldn't. Because I put my faith in the Constitution.