rational geekery

George W Bush’s admission in a recent address to spying on terror suspects (see US citizens) has sent shock waves across the American political spectrum.

The right-wing press have been mobilised in Bush’s defence, and constitutional experts are falling over themselves to justify or condemn the National Security Agency’s Orwellian surveillance.

America is founded on a just and virtuous suspicion of government. Students of colonial America understand why the US is steeped in individualistic liberty and limited government; it is in the foundations of federalism that localism should not be swamped by the controlling excesses of centralised power. The Founding Fathers had seen the British crown steal the fruits of their labour through excessive taxation and had been denied a voice in their own governance, by a British parliament, which had no colonial representation.

Bush’s neoconservative cabal have worked tirelessly to cement power and undermine liberty. Dick Cheney has lobbied to allow the CIA freedom to torture detainees, and the disgrace that is the Patriot Act has unravelled the constitutional privacy of each and every American.

Using the spectre of 9/11 the Whitehouse has exploited the goodwill of congress and used far-reaching powers to subvert the very essence of American Society.

If the president can order the surveillance of individuals without judicial authority he has become a de-facto dictator, regardless of his protestations to the contrary. How can the president stand before the American people, and claim to be spreading democracy across the Middle East when he spies on his own people unchecked? Hypocrisy has always been one of Bush’s weaknesses but this revelation conveys just how much the power of the government has increased in the last 5 years.

Add into this heady Orwellian mix the practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ and we have a dictatorship by proxy. ‘Suspects’ can be rounded up without warrant, dumped on a CIA transport, flown half-way across the world - beyond the eyes of American law – to detention centres where they can be tortured and detained indefinitely. The basic human rights of ‘suspects’ are wavered by a president who believes he is a modern Caesar: omnipotent, unchallengeable, and above the law.

If the Senate and the Congress have any future justification they will reign in this over-reaching and dangerous administration; they will chastise Bush and clip the wings of his presidency. The American Society was founded in reaction to the totalitarian excesses of European style unquestioned absolute monarchy; and yet only a few hundred years later – under the auspices of Islamic terror – American liberty is again in grave danger.