Freedomland

     Over the years, I’ve lost certain tenants of my faith in the fight to understand the world I live in, and the people I live with, more completely.  But when it comes down to it, whether a person is devout or has strayed, there are only a few key things they need to remember.  First is that all around us are entitled to love unconditionally.
     The second, and this comes right from the Catechism, is that the ends do not justify the means.
     Never.
     Ever.
     So I was surprised this morning to open up my paper to find Max Boot from the Council on Foreign Relations labeling me an “agitator” and an “absolutist.”
     Okay, fair enough, he wasn’t pointing me out specifically, but there was definitely a “and you know who you are” tone to his editorial.
     Boot’s Los Angeles Times piece is basically a super-sized advocate of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program that’s been in play since September of 2001.  The program has managed to stay under the radar for several years, until word came out the NSA, without legislative or judicial review, was eavesdropping on domestic phone calls either to or from suspected terrorists or those with ties to the same.  The episode raised not only uncomfortable questions about the primacy of the 4th amendment, particularly at wartime, but also, given the NSA’s choice to circumvent the FISA court’s domain on super-sensitive legal matters, whether the power of the executive branch could supersede the restrictions placed on it by the other two branches under the rationale of national security.
     The questions were never adequately answered, particularly when the President’s reasoning, when stripped of the legalese boiled down to “because I said so.”
     Now, like a Hudson River floater, the issue has surfaced again with the announcement in an article in USA Today that the NSA has collected trillions of phone records in a massive database in an effort to “filter” patterns that might point to possible terrorist chatter.  President Bush immediately came to the program’s defense (again), arguing that the NSA’s actions are not “data mining.”  Apparently he didn’t get the brief stating that scouring data for patterns is precisely the definition of data mining.
     It’s been hard lately to find defenders of these programs outside the circles who receive their paychecks from the federal government or Fox News, but Boot’s article claims that in a time of war, “the biggest advantage we have comes from our electronic wizardry.”
     Actually, this isn’t completely true- Boot claims more than this.  In fact, he gives a practical menu of reasons why the NSA program is a good idea.  If one doesn’t work, try the next one on for size.
     After he’s done lambasting people like me for actually caring about such a concept as civil rights, he goes for the benign approach.  The data is just numbers.  The data is just phone numbers and times and dates which, despite the enormity of the collective volume, reveal little personal information, particularly information that couldn’t already be secured from a credit bureau or credit card company by a dutiful private investigator.
     All well and good, except for this- if the data is this free of context, then what good is it as an intelligence gathering tool?  I don’t pretend to be educated in surveillance and cryptology, but even those who have are stumped at what masses of phone records, divorced from other intelligence, provides in the way of reliable information.
     Of course, that’s probably the point- the “where there’s smoke there’s fire” principle.  After two separate revelations about the NSA’s actions, is there anyone out there that thinks they haven’t just seen the tip of the iceberg?  Collecting random phone data seems nonsensical, unless you couple it to the question of what else the NSA is doing that hasn’t become a headline yet.
     The downside of all of these actions, Boot says, is dismissible “silliness.”  He paints groups like the Democratic Party and the ACLU who are up in arms over these revelations as Chicken Littles who are going around shouting not that the sky is falling, but that if there were a sky, it might hypothetically fall.
     Granted- much to the contrary of the bloggers of the ferocious ultra-left, the United States has not turned into an oligarchical police state.  The very fact that this controversy has stirred up passions in print and on the airwaves as opposed to sudden mass jailings and riots on the streets does speak to how well the American Character is holding under enormous strain.
     Boot’s defense is a facetious one, though, like defending a child who has been caught running with scissors because he didn’t hurt himself this time.  I live in a military town, never went to an Ivy League school (there was plenty of crab grass, though), and have never identified myself as part of what I consider the “fashionable left,” those in Hollywood and the entertainment biz who have taken up the left-wing saber more because it’s the “thing” now, rather than out of any deep-seated belief.  I do keep a close circle of friends and have yet to meet anyone who did not place a value on national safety and security.  However, all of us so-called “absolutists” have recognized that there are certain actions that can be culled into the basket of security and yet compromise it at the same time.  We could all be safe from muggers if there was a curfew prohibiting people from going out after dark.  We could have fewer car wrecks and save some gas if people were only allowed to drive every other day.  The reason why these are not sensible solutions is because smart people recognize them for what they are- substituting one form of shackles for another.
      The 4th amendment of the Constitution was designed by men who, much to the chagrin of people like Boot, saw the possible vindictive and overzealous nature of a government pursuing justice as more than a “hypothetical” possibility.  The neo-conservative line that Boot subscribes to, once the “it ain’t so bad” justification fails, move right on to expedience.  In a time when the country is at war with small groups of people who have the means to kill more than small groups have ever had in the past, notions of the 4th amendment and FISA are outdated and even disruptive to the pursuit of justice.  Which do you value more?  Your safety or your freedom?
     There’s a lapse of thought in believing that safeguards put in place by the Framers and those who would follow in their footsteps were ever meant to be conducive to government practices.  Of course they are difficult, of course they are frustrating- that’s the point.  A system of security and justice that voluntarily takes the high road creates a pure breed of justice unlike any seen in the history of the world.  I find it particularly distressing that I find myself in the same argument with people who want to limit my freedom so I can have more freedom (these are also the same people who tell me the government will have more money if I pay less taxes.  Go figure.).  Boot at least goes a step beyond, granting lip service to the possibility that such unfettered power exercised by the federal government can lead to abuse, but doesn’t seem any more inspired on how to solve that little glitch other than to say that anyone who does abuse their power will be thrown in jail and that will be that.  Yes, Mr. Boot, I’m sure Valerie Plame is very happy to hear that.
     I’ve never alluded to, or even pretended to be, a perfect Catholic, however there are some age-old ideals that I believe in.  First is that everyone deserves my respect, even when I fail in this regard miserably.  Second is that the reasons for doing things are never even half as important as how they are done.  Mr. Boot wants to keep America safe, and on that fact we see eye-to-eye.  What I refuse to believe, however, is that this requires a pull-out-the-stops approach.  In two-hundred years, we have fallen as a country.  We’ve fallen in our determination, our grit, and our morals.  We’ve also fallen in our belief in the system itself, to the point where legal cases are made that certain power restrictions can be ignored because they’re too much of a fuss.  In this new kill-the-patient-to-kill-the-disease world we’ve created, the time honored words of Thomas Jefferson, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” would have to be given the addendum, “as long as it’s convenient.”