The Tea Party and civil liberties

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/09/tea_party/index.html

  Wednesday, Feb 9, 2011 05:10 ET The Tea Party and civil
liberties<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/09/tea_party/index.html>
 By Glenn Greenwald <http://www.salon.com/author/glenn_greenwald/index.html>
  [image: The Tea Party and civil liberties]
AP
Bob Carey, 71, helps direct traffic before a Tea Party event in Eustis,
Fla., Monday.

It's long been clear that the best (and perhaps only) political hope for
civil liberties in the U.S. is an alliance that transcends the standard
Democrat v. GOP or left v. right dichotomies.  Last night's surprising (and
temporary) failure of the
House<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/08/AR2011020806345.html?hpid=topnews>to
extend some of the most controversial powers of the Patriot Act -- an
extension jointly championed by the House GOP leadership and the Obama White
House -- perfectly illustrates why this is true.

   - Continue reading<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/09/tea_party/index.html>

 The establishments of both political parties -- whether because of actual
conviction or political calculation -- are equally devoted to the National
Security State, the Surveillance State, and the endless erosions of core
liberties they entail.  Partisan devotees of each party generally pretend to
care about such liberties only when the other party is in power -- because
screaming about abuses of power confers political advantage and enables
demonization of the President -- but they quickly ignore or even justify the
destruction of those liberties when their own party wields power.  Hence,
Democratic loyalists spent years screeching that Bush was "shredding the
Constitution" for supporting policies which Barack Obama now
enthusiastically supports, while right-wing stalwarts -- who spent years
cheering on every Bush-led assault on basic Constitutional limits in the
name of Terrorism -- flamboyantly read from the Constitution during
the Obama era as though they venerate that document as sacred.  The war on
civil liberties in the U.S. is a fully bipartisan endeavor, and no effective
opposition is possible through fealty to either of the two parties.

For most civil liberties incursions over the last decade, there's been at
least some glimmer of opposition on the Left -- exemplified by people like
Russ Feingold in the Senate and the Congressional Black Caucus and Dennis
Kucinich in the House.  But they've been easily overwhelmed by the
civil-liberties-hating mainstream of the Democratic Party, and particularly
hampered by the lack of any meaningful partners on the Right (where Ron Paul
has been a solitary voice on such matters).  What has been most needed --
and most harmfully non-existent -- is some minimal amount of intellectual
honesty and consistency from America's conservatives, whose rhetoric of
"limited government" and "individual rights" has translated into nothing
other than lockstep support for ever-increasing government power and a
highly authoritarian political mindset.  It is that dynamic that has
marginalized civil liberties advocacy -- and rendered civil liberties
erosions inevitable -- no matter which party is in control.

There are so many examples proving how true that is, but just look at the
current "controversy" over extension of these Patriot Act provisions.
The three
provisions set to
expire<http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/08/patriot-act-extension/>--
the "roving" wiretaps, the authority to surveil individuals with no
connection to Terrorist groups (the "lone wolf" provision), and the power to
obtain "any tangible items" (the "library records" power) -- have a long
history<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/17/AR2007031701451.html>of
serious
abuse <http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/03/06/nsls>.
These provisions were supposed to be temporary, emergency measures hastily
enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attack with virtually no oversight.  Even
the Congress acting in the immediate aftermath of those attacks realized how
extreme they were, and thus imposed "sunset provisions" requiring their
expiration and renewal after several years.  But every time they've been
considered in the past 10 years, they've been extended with the full support
of both parties, without any added oversight provisions or limits; not even
incontrovertible evidence of systematic abuse has generated any meaningful
opposition.

This has been just as true in the GOP Congress and the Democratic Congress,
and with both Bush and Obama in the White House.  Yesterday, on the very
same day that the Obama White House demanded that Egypt repeal its
30-year-old "emergency
law,"<http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE64B07120100512>it
also demanded
enactment of the House GOP's proposal to extend America's own
emergency law<http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/02/08/irony-alert-obama-pushes-for-end-to-egypts-emergency-law-extension-of-us-patriot-act/>--
the Patriot Act -- for three more years with no new oversight (the
White
House actually wants a longer extension than the House GOP is willing to
support<http://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/USEOPWHPO/2011/02/08/file_attachments/16366/SAP_on_H.R._514.pdf>).
Meanwhile, in the Senate, Pat Leahy has introduced a bill to impose some
very mild and inadequate safeguards on these Patriot Act powers (some of
which the DOJ has voluntarily accepted), but those efforts are being
thwarted by the Democrats' Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, Dianne
Feinstein <http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/a-patriot-update/> -- easily one
of the most implacable enemies of civil liberties in the Congress and one of
the most loyal servants of the National Security State which enriches her
husband<http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-04-22/news/17487250_1_eg-g-division-george-r-melton-president-urs-corp-s-eg-g>;
just as she did last year, Feinstein has demanded a full extension of the
Patriot Act with *no reforms of any kind*.

Put another way, the reform-free extension of the Bush-era Patriot Act is
jointly assured by the most important Democratic power brokers (the Obama
White House and Feinstein) and the Congressional GOP leadership.  That's the
same bipartisan dynamic that has repeated itself over and over for the last
decade<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/01/30/bipartisanship>as
civil liberties in the U.S. have steadily eroded.

* * * * *

But what happened last night highlights the potential to subvert the
two-party stranglehold on these issues -- through a left-right alliance that
opposes the Washington insiders who rule both parties.  So confident was
the House GOP leadership in commanding bipartisan support that they put the
Patriot Act extension up for a vote using a fast-track procedure that
prohibits debate and amendments and, in return, requires 2/3 approval.  But
26 of the most conservative Republicans -- including several of the newly
elected "Tea Party"
members<http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/weigel/archive/2011/02/08/patriot-act-authorization-fails-eight-gop-freshmen-vote-no.aspx>--
joined the majority of Democratic House members in voting against the
extension, and it thus fell 7 votes short.  These conservative members
opposed extension on the ground that more time was needed to understand
whether added safeguards and oversight are needed.

The significance of this event shouldn't be overstated.  The proposed
Patriot Act extension still commanded support from a significant majority of
the House (277-148), and will easily pass once the GOP leadership brings up
the bill for a vote again in a few weeks using the standard procedure that
requires only majority approval.  The vast majority of GOP members,
including the leading Tea Party representatives, voted for it.  The Senate
will easily pass it.  And the scope of the disagreement even among the
Democrats opposing it is very narrow; even most of the "no" votes favor
extending these provisions, albeit with the types of tepid safeguards
proposed by Leahy.  So in one sense, what happened last night -- as is true
for most political "victories" -- was purely symbolic.  The White House will
get what it wants.

<http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MnYI3_FRbbQ/TVKGo6WPyEI/AAAAAAAAC54/BZyr_M7h2OI/s1600/maddow.png>But
while it shouldn't be overstated, there is a real significance here that
also shouldn't be overlooked.  Rachel Maddow last night pointed out that
there is a split on the Right -- at least a rhetorical one -- between what
she called "authoritarian conservatives" and "libertarian conservatives."
At some point, the dogmatic emphasis on limited state power, not trusting
the Federal Government, and individual liberties -- all staples of
right-wing political propaganda, especially Tea Party sloganeering -- has to
conflict with things like oversight-free federal domestic surveillance,
limitless government detention powers, and impenetrable secrecy (to say
nothing of exploiting state power to advance culture war aims).   Not even
our political culture can sustain contradictions as egregious as (a) reading
reverently from the Constitution and venerating limits on federal power, and
then (b) voting to vest the Federal Government with extraordinary powers of
oversight-free surveillance aimed at the American people.   This was the
contradiction which Dennis Kucinich smartly
exploited<http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=223897>when
challenging the Tea Party to join him in opposing the Patriot Act's
extension:

 The 112th Congress began with a historic reading of the U.S. Constitution.
*Will anyone subscribe to the First and Fourth Amendments tomorrow when the
PATRIOT Act is up for a vote?* I am hopeful that members of the Tea Party
who came to Congress to defend the Constitution will join me in challenging
the reauthorization.

There is precedent for this type of alliance on this and other issues.
Early on in the Bush years, a bill to repeal Patriot Act abuses was
co-sponsored by Kucinich and Ron Paul, and supported by the
ACLU<http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-endorses-bipartisan-kucinich-paul-fix-patriot-act-bill>.
 A bill to audit the Federal Reserve was opposed by most of official
Washington but enacted by a left-right
alliance<http://www.dailypaul.com/155726/update-hr-459-55-co-sponsors>.
Some of the earliest and most outspoken opposition to Bush civil liberties
radicalism -- and the war in Iraq -- came jointly from the Left and from the
Cato <http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb111/hb111-27.pdf>
Institute<http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2988>.
Religious Right groups scared of federal government oppression have long joined
with the ACLU and others in opposing some civil liberties
incursions<http://www.montanasnews.tv/articles.php?mode=view&id=3211>,
such as the Patriot Act.   Controversy over things like TSA patdowns and the
corrupt way the Wall Street bailout was manufactured came from both the
Right and the Left.  The fact that it's Tea Party Sen. Rand Paul willing to
question <http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/48848.html> the value of
American financial and military assistance to other nations (including to
Israel) -- while Democrats attack him for that brave position -- further
underscores the potential here.  And in other nations -- such as
Britain<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/21/britain>--
one finds a genuine
left-right alliance<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/06/13/conservatism/print.html>against
the political establishment's relentless assaults on civil
liberties.

Both liberal and conservative ideology can and should sustain popular
opposition to ongoing reductions in civil liberties.  It's the political
establishment -- regardless of the party to which it belongs -- that is
incentivized to seize always-greater levels of power in the name of
Security.  So many (though not all) of our most consequential political
disputes are far more about insider v. outsider than they are Democrat v.
GOP:  a simplistic dichotomy used to keep the populace divided over trivial
disputes and thus too fractured to resist the corruption and repression of
the bipartisan ruling class.  That's why I've long written and spoken about
the need for such an alliance as a bulwark against further civil liberties
abuses (for the crux of my argument, see the third question and answer in my
2010 interview with *The Atlantic*'s Conor
Friedersdorf<http://www.theatlantic.com/special-report/ideas/archive/2010/06/an-interview-with-glenn-greenwald/57976/>).


* * * * *

Despite my belief that such an alliance is both tenable and necessary -- and
last night's Patriot Act vote underscores that fact -- I'm ultimately quite
pessimistic about its ability to produce any meaningful benefits in the near
future.  That's because there are far too many impulses among ostensibly
"limited government" conservatives which conflict with -- and ultimately
negate -- any possibility for meaningful civil liberties defenses.

In those rare cases when there has been real opposition on the Right, it has
been grounded in a fear that *they* will be subjected to the abuses they
oppose.  Christian groups were petrified that Patriot Act powers would be
used by federal officials to disrupt their religious liberty.  Anger over
TSA patdowns occurred on the Right only because good white Christian
Americans (rather than dark American Muslims) were being inconvenienced.
And the newfound right-wing concern for the Constitution stems from the
belief that Obama (unlike Bush) will use the Executive Branch's ability to
transgress Constitutional limits in a way that harms conservatives.  It's
very self-interested -- and unprincipled -- advocacy:  they suddenly
discover their distrust of government power and belief in liberty only when
they perceive that their own interests are endangered.  That's better than
never discovering it -- indeed, the Democrats' failure to meaningfully
oppose Bush's seizure of radical
power<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/12/13/BL2007121301134.html>,
even if only on self-interested grounds, will redound to their eternal shame
-- but such erratic interest in civil liberties makes for a very unreliable
and ultimately counter-productive alliance.

Worse, other impulses in that movement render support for civil liberties
abuses inevitable as long as they're directed at other people.  The
nativism, the anti-Muslim bigotry, the blinding American exceptionalism, the
fear-based eagerness to support anything in the name of Security, and the
instinctive reverence for GOP political authority all ensure widespread
support among the Right -- even those factions incessantly marching under
the banner of "limited government" -- for the vast majority of authoritarian
assaults on civil liberties.  There has been some principled, strong
opposition among some libertarian and "paleoconservative" factions on the
Right, but those factions are far too small to make much of a difference.
For the vast majority of American conservatives -- including the
self-proclaimed limited government Tea Party movement -- the instincts that
generate support for authoritarian policies easily overwhelm the instincts
against it.

Last night's unexpected Patriot Act vote illustrates the tantalizing promise
of such an alliance.  Things would be vastly improved on the civil liberties
front if the American Right was even minimally faithful to the political
principles they claim to support.  But the nature of that movement means
that last night's vote is far more of an isolated aberration than anything
likely to change the bipartisan dynamic in a positive way.  Indeed, the very
weak status of civil liberties in the U.S. is compellingly illustrated by
the fact that an alliance with this deeply unprincipled and authoritarian
movement is one of the few viable means for stemming the tide of the
erosion.

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