Renew the PATRIOT Act—all of it, now

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

Although many Americans are understandably weary of war after over 9 years of armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and against terrorist cells here at home and throughout the world, we need to remember that those of us, who have not served in combat (or who have not had loved ones serving in combat) during these years since we were attacked on 9/11, have had to sacrifice relatively little—other than inconveniences when we travel by air.

We haven’t been subject to a draft. We haven’t had to buy war bonds or pay a surtax to fund the war. We haven’t had to serve on local draft boards or civil defense teams. We haven’t been asked to turn our homes into boarding houses for soldiers and sailors awaiting deployment. We haven’t had tires, gasoline or groceries rationed, or had to turn in metal for industrial use. We haven’t been subject to movies and radio programs that were required to carry pro-war content in every film or broadcast. We haven’t been subject to blackouts, curfews, or air-raid drills. We haven’t been threatened with arrest for speaking against the war, or against either the Bush or Obama Administrations. We haven’t had our civil liberties suspended. We haven’t been gathered and placed in detention camps because our last names sounded Arabic.

In short, we’ve had it pretty easy while our country has been defended these last 9 years, compared to the sacrifices imposed on earlier generations of Americans during wartime. In the meantime, the defense and intelligence apparatus that we built with our tax dollars after World War II has worked night and day to keep us safe against an army that wore no uniform and knew no boundary. Added to that defense after 9/11 were additional authorizations to conduct wartime surveillance and searches, which were contained in a statute known as the PATRIOT Act.

Thankfully, a solid majority of the U.S. House of Representatives understood that we are still at war, and that there is still a need to conduct the wartime surveillance and searches authorized by that act. Those representatives voted yesterday to fully reauthorize the PATRIOT Act. Unfortunately, a surprising number of Republicans voted against reauthorization, so now the bill will have to come before the House under rules that will allow for amendments, and many Republicans intend to offer or support amendments that will dilute or remove key provisions of the Act.

Although the implementation of such authority to wiretap or search personal conversations and conduct carries the risk of making mistakes that could embarrass or harass innocent individuals—and I am sure mistakes have been made—it is a testament to the professional work of the men and women in our defense, intelligence and homeland security establishment, that few if any of us have been, or know anyone who has been, subject to surveillance or search under this Act. In fact, the lawsuits that have been brought against the Act have been brought by people who thought they could have been, or could be searched or wiretapped, but who had no proof that they had been. This is a far different experience from those who, during past conflicts, really had their liberties trampled through arrests, mass suspension of civil liberties, or mass detentions.

However, there are those who say that it doesn’t matter how professionally the authority has been exercised, because any compromise of liberty—no matter how theoretical or attenuated, and regardless of the existence of a war—is indefensible. These people then love to spout the following quote in support of their position that the Founders would never agree to such limits on their liberties:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Those who use this quote in this way are just plain wrong. In fact, the circumstances that led to the making of that statement show it was never intended to address this type of issue.

This quote appeared in the preface to a work published in London by Benjamin Franklin in 1759, for the purpose of educating members of Parliament and other political leaders about the need to support the defense of the colonies against the French and their Native American allies during the Seven Years’ War (what we often refer to as “the French and Indian War”). Although the quote is often attributed to Franklin, its actual authorship is unclear, because it comes from a letter prepared in 1755 by the colonial Assembly of Pennsylvania and addressed to the colonial Governor.

In 1755, the colonists that had settled western Pennsylvania had come under constant attack from French forces, and the local tribes aligned with the French. The colonists' situation had become dire, so they asked for money from the colonial government to fund the purchase of arms for themselves, or to pay for arming local tribes that were loyal to the British, in order to defend their homes and settlements against further attack. The Assembly did not have the resources for such an expenditure, so it prepared the letter to the Governor, in which the Assembly asked the Governor to obtain funding from the Penn family for the defensive arms.

Remember that Pennsylvania contained a large number of Quakers and others who opposed armed conflict. Among these groups, opposition to such funding quickly arose. They advocated that peace could be achieved through negotiation and trade with the Native American tribes loyal to the French, rather than through armed aggression.

The sentence contained in the Assembly’s letter was meant as a derisive response to the pacifist. It was intended to challenge the notion that the survival of the liberty of the colonists could be allowed to hinge on the success of appeasing the enemy tribes. In fact, the proper way to read the quote would be to reconstruct it as follows:

Those who would buy temporary safety, and avoid defending their liberty, by appeasing the enemy, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Understood in this way, the statement by the Assembly is a declaration for the essential right or “liberty” of self-defense—individually and collectively—in a time of war. It is consistent with the position taken by Lincoln, FDR, and George W. Bush when our country has come under attack. Moreover, it is consistent with the swift, if not more extreme measures the Washington and Adams Administrations took in the face of potential civil war and war with France—and they were Founding Fathers. The statement does not defend neutering the ability of the country to defend itself, so some of us can rest at night believing that our phone calls to Europe, or our public library accounts, are secure from government surveillance to stop a wartime attack.

Just as I’ve said in prior posts that we need to grow-up and take responsibility for our selves and our communities if we are ever to dig ourselves out of the domestic whole we are in, we need to grow-up and realize that we are still at war. War requires sacrifice and a commitment to defend yourself, your neighbor and your country. That sacrifice and commitment means that sometimes you will need to take actions that would not be necessary or tolerated in peace time. If you are not willing to defend yourself, your neighbor or your nation in this way, then you deserve neither the liberty nor the safety you crave.

To those Representatives who voted to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act, and to those who support them, I say “thank you, and keep up the fight.” To those who oppose reauthorization to protect an international phone call or library check-out you might make someday, I say “grow-up, and thank your lucky stars that our parents and grandparents weren’t this selfish.”