Safer?

[saavedra77]

Newsweek's current cover story likens Bush Administration efforts to expand presidential power after 9/11 to similar moves by earlier presidents during times of war or national crisis: i.e., the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Civil War suspension of habeus corpus, the criminalization of certain forms of dissent during the First World War, Japanese internment during the Second, and the extrajudicial wiretapping carried out under presidents from F.D.R. to Nixon. And while the authors consider that the jury may still be out on the necessity and constitutional propriety of initiatives like the NSA's recently-revealed domestic spying program, they're willing to render verdict of history regarding prior lurches toward a more Imperial Presidency: "None ... made the nation appreciably safer." 

Comments

[greyaenigma.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised at how accepting of presidential over-reaching the article seems -- the author seems to be saying Bush and company went just a little beyond his proper authority, and doesn't seem bothered by who the NSA surveillance is done pretty much without any oversight at all.

It's one thing to say "these things happen, but it's a dangerous trap to allow anyone to think that just because it's happened before it should be tolerated.

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's much easier to say "these things happen" if you don't expect it to happen to someone like you. There's also a blythe assumption that the historical pattern will repeat itself: the president will overreach, much later (too late to do anything about it) we'll all decide that it was a mistake, things will go back to normal until the next crisis comes around, when another president will do it again, etc.

Not only does this attitude dismiss the consequences borne by innocent people under policies like the Japanese internment, it fails to consider the possibility that things could get worse. Personally, I think the Bush Administration's "trust me" attitude flies in the face of the whole political tradition of limited government--going back to the Magna Carta ...

Still, Newsweek's pointed reminder that past excesses didn't appreciably improve national security struck me as significant.