signalnoise

Clarence Page has written a pretty nice little piece, in which he defends the duty of the media to investigate and report on the government, even at the risk of revealing state secrets. Page is specifically addressing the recent reveal by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal that the Bush administration has been secretly tracking money traveling through various financial institutions, all in the name of the national security. The president, of course, is pissed that the secret is out.

The problem here, so far as I'm concerned, has less to do with civil liberties and more to do with separation of powers - though, the two really are linked. Don't get me wrong: the whole invasion of privacy thing irks me. And I do think we need to be wary of government attempts to infringe our rights - if we don't defend them, they just might go away. But I also hate knee-jerk reactions, especially when those knee-jerk reactions are politically driven.

There is a tendency among some critics look at democracy (and its associated rights) as both teleological and fragile. In other words, they see the creation of democratic institutions as the "end," and wring their hands over any change in those institutions. Often, folks who think about democracy and rights don't seem quite able to get beyond that point. Of course, since so much of why we admire democracy is because it leaves space for individual self-determination - it means that democratic thinkers in many ways inherently *cannot* think beyond that institutional step. Which is fine, I suppose. Except it seems to lead to these "freak outs," on both sides of the ideological divide. Hence, any time there is sustained conflict, institutions change, or laws are enforced in a different manner, everyone screams that the sky is falling ... and really, things will probably be OK.

Geoffrey Stone has written a book, Perilious Times, tracing how civil liberty protections rise and fall throughout American history in accordance with panics over war. In many ways, this book is distressing - don't we ever learn to not protect our liberties? But, it should also be reassuring - after all, while there were unfortunate crack downs on rights during some times of conflict, it's not like the whole damn democracy ever fell apart. [To note: I'm at least open to the possibility that some conflicts *may* require some changes in how our poliitcal freedoms are enjoyed. Now, I'm not sure what should happen or how it should be regulated - that would be contextual. And I would accept any restrictions very warily, and ONLY with a great deal of transperancy. But, it's worth remembering that rights only exist because governments protect them. Hence, there may be times where, under certain circumstances and with certain legal agreements, it may be wholly rational to briefly restrict rights for the greater good in the long run.]

So, that's why the civil liberties angle doesn't bug me so much. What bugs me is how Congress is just rolling over on this one. The legislative branch is reallly how citizens pursue their interests (Re: what you call pork, I just call necessary infrastructure). Generally, Congress has kind of been the executive branch's bitch lately - going along with president ever since 9/11 with far too little questioning. In many ways, this continues, as Congress agrees with the president and is also pissed with the news media for leaking information about the money-tracing program.

BUT, Congress is also showing that it still has some guts, arguing that the president is being far too liberal in how he interprets and enforces legislation passed by Congress. This is good - this is Congress doing it's job. It's just not really clear to me what Congress we're going to end up with at the end of the Bush Administration - or whether it will even matter. I don't want to be one of those knee-jerk types, but executive power has grown dramatically over the past 50 years or so. This president seems to have radically increased it yet again, albeit under extraordinary circumstances. But I'm not sure that once we return to more "settled" times, that the executive branch will give up any power or that Congress will even demand it. It could be that this expanded executive authority has become *normalized.*

I don't think that Presidents are bad people ... I just don't think they do the job of representing the interests of the vast numbers of Americans very well. In addition, a powerful executive and a rubber stamp Congress is *not* a set-up conducive to the long-term sustenance of a republic. In essence, it is a danger to freedom, as the unitary executive enacts policy without consideration of competing interests or productive dialogue with dissenting voices.

I know this imbalance in federal/legislative power has been addressed by others folks. But I do think it's something that has not been looked at enough. Most of the critiques of the Bush administration are coming out of either a fairly partisan place or a more short-sighted debate regarding immediate rights. I think the long-term impact is going to be institutional arrangements, which are often created to be temporary but tend to establish an intertia that is hard to break. And *that's* what makes me uncomfortable.