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Highlands Today

Bush Has Eroded American Liberties In The Name Of Security

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Randy Ludacer

Published: November 19, 2007

My heartfelt thanks to Bud Morgan for his guest column titled "Darkness Obscures America's Horizon" and to the Highlands Today for publishing it. I fear that the American public has submerged itself in a sea of complacency with respect to the gradual erosion of our liberties and the blind reliance on an administration which is systematically dismantling our democracy behind a veil of secrecy.

Using fear as a smokescreen, the Bush administration has prevented public disclosure of activities which by Constitution and custom are the legitimate and critical concerns of both Congress and the American public. Our biggest danger is not the Islamic fanatic plotting against us in a cave in Afghanistan, but the public apathy which fear has instilled into the public discourse.

Being seduced by such misleading terminology as the "Patriot Act," a legislative act whose sweeping provisions have all but gutted the rights of Americans to privacy and due process, we continue to accept the bland apology that it is to protect us from what is somewhat unclear, but it is certainly the beginning of a death knell for our traditions and liberties.

While the usurpation of power by the executive branch continues, the delicate balance contemplated by the drafters of our Constitution, the checks and balances between the president, Congress and the courts, becomes more remote and insubstantial.

The catalog of abuses enumerated in Bud Morgan's column should shock all thinking individuals, create concerns to stop this slide into totalitarianism, being sold to us in the name of security.

There have been other episodes in our history where fear has been the bugaboo by which vital liberties have been curtailed or ignored, but somehow a vestige of common sense has brought us back from the brink, saving that vital core of our democracy and reestablishing good judgment and sound government.

Hopefully, we will shortly be rid of Bush and his ilk before too much more damage results. What should be made clear is that President Bush and his supporters have no confidence in government, in the good sense of the voters and their elected representatives to serve our finer instincts and nature. Instead, they have followed a course of conduct to implement a philosophy that government doesn't work, and that what needs to be done, regardless of the populate will, regardless of our traditions of elected government, regardless of our Constitution and its concern for the rights of the individual is to cripple our governmental institutions.

As a parting gift to Bush, the recent Republican Congress passed some incredible legislation to clothe the administration's misdeeds and rob us of our history. Not surprisingly these acts are camouflaged with the usual misleading misnomers; i.e. the Public Interest Declassification Act of 2000, as amended in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

Advanced as a method to open records the public, this legislation in reality gives to the president absolute power to prevent disclosure of any and all records which the president, in his virtually unlimited discretion, to prevent disclosure of any material which he deems to require protection in the interests of national security.

It provides for advisory committees, the majority of whose members are appointed by the president, for the longest terms provided, to advise the president with regard to withholding disclosure, a total and patent sham to give cover to the fact that the president alone shall decide what is to be kept secret in the service of national security. In other words, after all the smoke and mirrors, bells and whistles, the convoluted language and double negatives, are scrapped away from this sterling piece of legislation, George Bush and only George Bush may decide what is appropriate to be disclosed to Congress and the American public.

His curtain of secrecy and deception shall remain inviolate. And oh, yes, this legislation shall "sunset" eight years after the date of its enactment, by coincidence the end of the Bush presidency, and the Republican's ultimate attempt to make secret forever its rape of our democratic institutions.

Randy Ludacer
lives in Lake Placid

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