Getting Pummeled By The War On Drugs, The War on Terrorism, and The War on Piracy

For a time I thought the national debt was the most pressing political issue for the United States of America. It is rapidly expanding by record amounts, and the political leaders seem to have a compete unwillingness to make hard choices instead of just kicking things down the road a little more. I know Keynesians like Krugman keep saying that we should borrow even more because interest rates on Treasuries are so low right now, but Europe is daily proving that interest rates can suddenly rise much quicker than your ability to pay them back. I fear we are setting ourselves up for enormous problems in the future.

But the financial Armageddon has not happened yet, despite the regularly dire predictions of doomsdayers since 2008. It still seems to be somewhere in the distant future. I am still very concerned about it, but there is another important political issue that is beginning to cast much larger and more frightening shadows on my presently unfolding life.

It is the issue of civil liberties.

Personal freedoms have been getting pummeled ever since the “Patriot” Act in the wake of 9/11, when Americans were understandably willing to trade some liberties to try to stop another attack. But the tenth anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone. There have been no similar attacks on U.S. soil since then. Osama bin Laden is now dead. You might think that personal freedoms would finally be on the upswing again. Instead, the assault on them is now accelerating.

The most noticeable blow in recent weeks has been the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA. It seems that Obama has yet to sign it, but he has dropped his original intention to veto it. In the name of fighting terrorism, the NDAA codifies indefinite intention into law – meaning it is now “legal” for the government to arrest you and put you in jail without ever giving you a trial, a blatant violation of the 6th Amendment to the Constitution. It expands the scope of the war on terror with dangerously vague terminology, and it does not exempt US citizens from potential abuse. Apologists for the NDAA have argued that some of the above claims are not actually true, but such myths have been viciously debunked by Glenn Greenwald, who presents and analyzes the actual text.

The NDAA has been generating significant outrage from both the left and the right, but it is only the latest in a long list of ways the federal government has been attacking civil liberties under Obama’s tenure:

On the eve of 2012, President Obama is facing a backlash from civil libertarians that is more widespread and intense than anything he’s yet seen. He has previously been subject to complaints about his war on whistleblowers, the humanitarian and strategic costs of his drone war, the illegality of the war he waged in Libya, his use of the state secrets privilege, his defense of Bush-era warrantless wiretapping, and his assertion of the power to kill American citizens accused of terrorism. But news that Obama plans to sign rather than veto a bill enshrining indefinite detention into U.S. law and failing to exempt American citizens is provoking unprecedented ire.

As if all of these things weren’t bad enough, they are only casualties of the government’s attempts to fight the “War on Terrorism.” We also now have a “War on Piracy.” A terrible bill with the acronym of SOPA has been generating large opposition in recent weeks, but like Terrorism and the NDAA, it’s just the tip of another iceberg. Wired sums the numerous ways intellectual property has waged an assault on civil liberties in the last year alone:

Online civil liberties groups were thrilled in May when Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the head of the powerful Judiciary Committee, announced legislation requiring the government, for the first time, to get a probable-cause warrant to obtain Americans’ e-mail and other content stored in the cloud.

But, despite the backing of a coalition of powerful tech companies, the bill to amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act was dead on arrival, never even getting a hearing before the committee Leahy heads.

In contrast, another proposal sailed through Leahy’s committee, less than two weeks after Leahy and others floated it at about the same time as his ECPA reform measure. That bill, known as the Protect IP Act, was anti-piracy legislation long sought by Hollywood that dramatically increased the government’s legal power to disrupt and shutter websites “dedicated to infringing activities.”

The article follows with paragraph after frustrating paragraph illustrating the failures of many attempts to protect the technological freedoms of American citizens, and the successes of many attempts to restrict those freedoms.

But the “War on Terrorism” and the “War on Piracy” still aren’t enough. As always, there’s the ever-present “War on Drugs.” Apparently there are law enforcement officers seeking the privilege of letting a dog sniff around your house for illegal substances. That’s bringing my favorite analogy for opposing privacy intrusion a little too close to reality. Meanwhile, the TSA is continuing to expand its presence beyond the airport – despite the utter lack of evidence of actual dangers in train stations and subways. (After the over-reaction to the TSA’s temporary Tennessee checkpoints, I said, “Meanwhile, the gradual expansion of power continues.” And indeed it is continuing unabated.)

The government is now waging a “War” on Drugs, a “War” on Terrorism, and a “War” on Piracy, and innocent American citizens are increasingly in danger of becoming casualties of these wars – sometimes even more than one. If the assaults were limited to any one of these domains, it would be easy to claim, as many do, that if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about. Oh, I have no connections with terrorists, I don’t care. Oh, only drug sympathizers care about legalizing drugs. Oh, if you don’t like anti-piracy laws, you must be a pirate! But taken together, it is all evidence of a multi-pronged assault on the freedom of innocent American citizens to live normal lives without the ever-present threat of being bothered by the government. We can be increasingly bothered even if we have done nothing wrong, and there are increasingly dangerous consequences regarding what can happen to us if the government mistakes us for doing something wrong.

Hey, look, I’m terribly sorry that you’re fighting a piracy problem, but based on no more than the already-existing evidence of abuse by the entertainment industry in taking down websites, I can confidently assert that giving you more ability to do so will create a much larger problem for me and other citizens than your piracy problem ever caused. Hey, look, I’m terribly sorry that there are confused zealots who want to kill people, but as you increase the attention you’re giving to people like me whenever we try to go places to make sure that we’re not one of them, you’re creating a much larger problem for me and other citizens than these terrorists ever have. Hey, look, I’m terribly sorry that you want to lock people in jail for hurting themselves, but the increasing suspicion you’re forcing upon me and my personal property to make sure I’m not part of it is creating a much larger problem for me and other citizens than the poor druggies ever will.

Thus I’m becoming increasingly convinced that civil liberties are currently the most important issue of our present time. As such, even though I haven’t thrown my full weight behind any of the GOP presidential candidates, I’m increasingly finding myself leaning towards Ron Paul again. I already like him a lot on deficits, and he lines up strongly with my political biases toward government spending and regulation, though I’m somewhat wary of his monetary policy, parts of his foreign policy, and his potential leadership skills. But I know he’s the only candidate I can even remotely trust on civil liberties, and even though I don’t expect him to be president, this issue is becoming important enough that I’m now considering casting a vote for Dr. Paul, in the name of Civil Liberties, for the land of the mostly free.