Buzz saves freedom
Bureaucratic momentum is the real threat
Dear George Bush Jr.:
Sitting in the Oval Office trying to figure out how to make the invisible threat of terrorism visible, you must be tempted to think about your place in history as the man of resolve who stared down those cowardly killers of innocents, saved the American way of life and made the world a safer place for U.S. citizens (and those who are with you).
I’m no scholar, but I’ve been around long enough to know history often finds the routine and mundane more important than the sudden and spectacular. The external threats to the United States come and go, but the institutions created to respond to those threats only grow and find new ways to justify their existence.
If you aren’t careful, the way your intelligence and law enforcement communities deal with the terrorists could become the real threat to freedom. The gigabillion pieces of information collected by these guys will be translated into gigabillions of dollars paid by taxpayers for the privilege of being watched. I shall call you father because you may end up siring my big brother.
It hasn’t happened yet, but you, my pater, are walking along the top of a slippery slope – one you might not even see because of your law and order politics and desire for a place in the history books. You have heard all about this dangerous slope from social-fabric destroying liberals. I’m here as a salt-of-the-earth conservative to tell you there is real reason to pay some attention to those soft-headed folks.
Your world changed on September 11, but mine didn’t. The agro-business here in Central Alberta is still suffering the slings and arrows of globalization, and my wife Mitzy and I go about our daily routines with little concern for terrorists.
In the meantime, the information age means ever growing amounts of information about our lives is being collected and stored out of sight. The volume of information might simply overwhelm those trying to study our lives, however, I worry that the law enforcement community’s efforts to sift through that information in the name of public safety will make it as bloated and invasive a part of the government’s portfolio as health care and education.
I’ll pick on your Federal Bureau of Investigation, although I am sure the same holds for every other government information-collector in the U.S. and Canada. The FBI was a tiny arm of the U.S. government until bureaucratic momentum allowed it to turn the White Slavery Act (and the hysteria that surrounded it) into a 600-person bureau. Suddenly, any suspected criminal that crossed a state line with a white woman who was not his wife became the FBI’s jurisdiction. The Red Scares of the ’20s came, as did J. Edgar Hoover and by 1939 the FBI had 1,800 employees with a mission to collect all the information it could on suspects and criminals alike.
I believe the lasting result of your war on terrorism will be a similar expansion in the size and role of agencies such as the FBI. The FBI is already having difficulty managing the information it collects – as far back as the Kennedy assassination, it has been accused of failing to use that information to prevent any and all bad people from hurting U.S. citizens.
Once they know what they are looking for, the FBI can amass a frighteningly detailed picture of almost anyone’s day to day activities. The problem is that this ability isn’t as good at identifying and stopping people from committing despicable acts as it is at pursuing and persecuting people already identified as a threat. The problem is figuring out who to pursue without trampling on the rights of those practicing legitimate political dissent, as has happened in the past.
That problem doesn’t have an answer, but vain efforts to find one will bless current FBI director Robert Mueller with an opportunity to expand his empire. Mueller can claim there is a desperate need for more manpower to deal with the information overload of September 11. Expanding the right of the FBI to collect even more information will require even more employees. Yet, as we conservatives well know, the one thing bureaucrats do best is finding more ways to interfere with people’s lives and more reasons to hire more bureaucrats. It’s a vicious cycle you will have difficulty avoiding or stopping.
Your marketing people will tell you that it is politically dangerous for a law and order candidate such as yourself to refuse the FBI’s demands. And yet, unless you want your place in history to be one quite different than the one that lulls you to sleep at night, you must risk your political future to save our freedom.
Your loving son,
Buzz Angus
|
