From Jack Balkin
Do not be mistaken: We are not hurtling toward the Gulag or anything that we have seen before. It will be nothing so dramatic as that. Rather, we are slowly inching, through each act of fear mongering and fecklessness, pandering and political compromise, toward a world in which Americans have increasingly little say over how they are actually governed, and increasingly little control over how the government collects information on them to regulate and control them. Slowly, secretly and imperceptibly, the mechanisms of government surveillance are being freed from methods of political control and accountability; and the liberties of ordinary citizens are being surgically removed under a potent anesthesia concocted from propaganda, fear, ignorance and apathy.
I hope the Democrats are justly proud of themselves for their cowardly contributions to this slow-motion destruction of our constitutional system.
What is so upsetting is the pattern. All the individual technical defeats taken alone seem innocuous, but it’s the slow erosion and the setting of precedents, and the failure of leaders to emerge from either party to put a stop to this that makes me so heartsick. It will be a problem so long as the poise and sanity of Russ Feingold is rejected for the obsessive fear of Islamic terrorists that possesses Joe Lieberman. That Lieberman is considered sane and moderate by the mainstream while Feingold is pushed to the fringe is the most telling sign of our collective madness.
Feingold has been a consistent study in common sense and principled political courage while Lieberman has been a consistent study in the politics of fear. Lieberman represents everything that has been wrong in American politics since 9/11. The conventional wisdom would have us think Lieberman’s hysteria is principled and tough, but Lieberman represents a politics that has no more principle or poise or courage in it than an adrenaline-compelled fear response. It’s truly shameful and truly embarrassing.
Nothing good ever comes from giving into fear, and we will all eventually reap a bitter harvest from what he and his fear-mongering cronies have sown. Many are reaping it already.
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