A Defeat for Bush Not the Patriot Act

Contrary to the Washington Post’s analysis, the Senate’s refusal this week to renew the Patriot Act is no victory for liberty or democracy. Yet the bi-partisan move to delay final renewal of the Act is the closest thing to a defense of civil liberties that the nation has seen in the War on Terror—and that is precisely why we should be worried. The opposition accepts so many tenets of the Act that one can hardly understand why they are bothering to challenge it at all.

Republican John Sununu was explicit in explaining the senators’ limited aims: “There’s no reason we need to leave here without keeping elements of the Patriot Act in place. We support these tools, I certainly do. This isn’t a question of changing or weakening or undermining the tools.” In case we were in any doubt his colleague, Democrat Patrick Leahy, clarified repeatedly: “Our goal has been to mend the Patriot Act not to end it.”

Finally they had the nerve to summon up the words of Benjamin Franklin to their cause “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.” But they clearly misunderstand the point BF was making (see Leahy’s appalling paraphrasing of the quote in the transcript); that liberty must have a privileged place over more immediate concerns. Leahy’s desire for: “a consensus Patriot Act, [in which] we balance our security needs with American civil liberties” is exactly the compromise against which Franklin warned. A pragmatic consensus is not a defense of principle. As long as we refuse to take seriously the idea of liberty, any threat, no matter how remote, will be enough to justify the further extension of the government’s police powers.