Mr.Intel's Journal: Bush and his need to spy on Americans

The NY Times is reporting that "The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations." Althought the measure was beaten back in committee, it appears that the administration is not satisfied with Patriot or Patriot II type powers...

Submitted to Slashdot at 3:00pm Eastern time.

My question is: Where will it stop? Is the government going to use 9/11 as an excuse to restrict its citizens freedomd forever, until we are truly a police state? At what point will those under Bush (or his cabinet) tell them that enough is enough?

In studying Political Science, I have taken a couple of ideology classes and have tried to understand what direction our society is going. America practices democratic liberalism as a means of societal order. Our civil society is based on the principles espoused in the Constitution. According to Isaiah Berlin, the freedoms in the bill of rights are negative freedoms. This means that they are freedoms from something, namely freedoms from government interference. James Madison did not want there to be a bill of rights because the constitution specifically mentions that all rights not given to the state or federal government are contained with the people. He feared that if they were spelled out, any missing rights not explicitly stated would be assumed to belong to the federal goverenment. It seems that his fears are becoming justified.

The Constitution makes it difficult for bad laws to stay in force, especially when they butt up against the Constitution so forcefully. However, the courts cannot take action unless a case is brought to them. Therefore, it could be some time before the Patriot act and its derivatives are challenged. Until then, America becomes less and less the land of the free and the home of the brave, no matter what the Bush propoganda machine would have you believe.