| Davina's Delicacies |
| The Patriot Act Is Back with a Vengeance |
| by Davina Blair |
| The decision has been made to extend the provisions, courtesy of Republican lawmakers. Is America boldly declaring herself a one-party state? |
Today was a momentous day in history as the bureaucrats on Pennsylvania Avenue voted to extend the reign of the Patriot Act–an infamous bit of legislation that railroaded its way through Congress with little political or national discussion. Democrats and Republicans alike were too concerned they would be seen as terrorist-loving pantywaists, so they voted away your right to keep your communications, medical records, financial records, and library selections private. To put it in plain speech, voting against the Patriot Act would have made them feel unpatriotic. Isn’t this nominalism at its finest? After all, what kind of grinch would vote against the No Child Left Behind Act?
I have tried to empathize with what our politicians were going through when they first passed the Patriot Act. I remembered the polls and the mood of the country - a poll to a politician is like air to a man in a vacuum, and it goes without saying that the climate was unsuitable for any kind of dithering . The country was in turmoil because America, the most powerful country in the world was under attack by a shadowy network of terrorists. Our vision of a safe-haven of opportunity was irreparably shattered. We wondered if we would be the next Israel, leaving our homes only to wonder if we would come back alive at the end of the day. In the wake of such senseless devastation, emotions are deafening while cool logic is silenced. A law must be made to save us from our own privacy! Thus amidst the cloaks and daggers of midnight meetings, the USA PATRIOT Act was born.
Going against the tide of hysteria would have been political suicide, so Amendments 1-7 were effectively discarded . Although the renewal of the Act spells gloom and doom to privacy-loving citizens everywhere, there is a semi- ridiculous booby prize at the end of the rainbow. These provisions will be in effect for “only” four more years. Unfortunately, this tenuous promise of a sunset is cold comfort for those of us that are in favor of a less intrusive government. According to CNN, the Republican majority is sorting out the particulars by themselves:
Negotiations also excluded Democrats, Leahy said, which has turned renewal of the act into a partisan issue and undermined its credibility in the eyes of the American public.
Have we marched so far down the path toward tyranny that a major political party is excluded from the table? The Democrats are the minority party, and all save one voted for the Act walking in lock-step with President Bush and the Republican Congress. If protecting America was really what we were trying to accomplish, wouldn’t we withdraw our vast imperial armada from countries we’ve long since made peace with, restore civil liberties to our citizens, and craft laws with both parties contributing to the discourse? The stated purpose of the USA PATRIOT Act was to protect Americans from the evil plots of international terrorists; however, the reality is your eighty-year-old grandmothers will continue to be strip-searched at airports, while Junior’s library books are closely monitored. |
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