A response to Taplin’s post on Government Power
I wrote a lengthy comment in response to another great post from Jon Taplin here:
http://jtaplin.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/anthrax-the-lure-of-big-military-money/
and wanted to share it.
I agree there’s no chance McCain would do anything to correct the many egregious changes we’ve seen in our government’s relationship to the Constitution during the Bush administration. And like you I think this country badly needs Obama and the change his candidacy generally represents. But I’m also deeply disappointed in Obama for his recent vote on FISA. See http://getfisaright.net/
Even if an Obama administration conducts itself with orders of magnitude more integrity than the current one — as I believe it will — this kind of erosion of civil liberties and privacy are like a ratchet, they only change in one direction. So while Obama’s administration might not abuse its power, at some point in the future there will likely be other terrible, even Bush-like presidents who will take every opportunity to do so. At that point, if the constitutional mechanics of checks and balances have already been dismantled or reconfigured to grant essentially kingly power to the executive branch, and we’ve all gotten used to the idea that it’s ok for the government to spy on all of us all the time, we’ll be in even deeper trouble than we are now, when there’s still at least some outrage at this illegitimate, illegal, un-American, fascist behavior of our so called leaders.
Perhaps Obama will reconsider when he becomes president; he did express concerns about the bill and certainly seems interested in listening to his supporters (virtually none of whom support the position, and nearly all of whom, if aware, oppose it). We need to pressure him to do exactly that.
I also have some hope that our maturing collective ability as citizens to use similar tools of transparency to shine a spotlight on what our elected representatives are actually doing, to turn the tables and essentially “spy” on our (supposedly open) government, will help. Jon Udell’s recent writings on GovTrack and MAPLight are relevant here, see e.g. http://blog.jonudell.net/2008/07/23/kudos-for-maplights-visualization-of-congressional-activity/
and the Change Congress movement founded by Larry Lessig http://change-congress.org/ is a force for good… but given the public’s lack of outrage against Bush et al, this may not be enough. If those of us paying attention do nothing, it certainly won’t be. So:Write! Talk! Take action!
