Privacy, my Ashcroft...

I am a die hard, card carrying, placard waving Bush supporter. (George W. Bush, supporter) Team leader, did mailings, get out the vote, community proselytizing, Bush advocate. I believe that having a President in office who respects the sinfulness of man, while pushing for the very best in all of us is a tremendous asset. That's why I don't understand the enthusiasm that the administration seems to feel for a permanent Patriot Act. Who knows when the end will come on our war against terror? Will anyone sign a treaty? Will we install a democratic government? Or will the terrorists slowly fade away into some remote country to take over, suppress and castigate a people they will then call their own. Leaving the United States with it's own lingering Terrorist, a monolithic government bureaucracy with unprecedented power unleashed by a terrorist economy based Patriot Act. A utilitarian view of this might come closest to truth. John Stuart Mill once said, ‘A people, may prefer a free government....if by momentary discouragement or temporary panic, they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; or if in a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, in all these cases, they are more or less unfit for liberty. And though it may have been to their good to have had it for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it.’ Our leaders today are great men.
I trust George W. Bush. I trust John Ashcroft. But what about the future leaders of this country? Do I trust Eric Holder? Do I trust Eliot Spitzer? What about the multitude of leaders that are currently nameless, faceless bureaucrats doing the grunt work for those I currently trust. Does anybody wonder what a second Clinton Administration or the like might do with it's new found control? They were giving the Patriot Act a test run even before it became law, just ask the CIA who finally found their files in the White House residence. No, there should be serious, conscientious discussion about the freedoms we've sacrificed in the name of security. We, the people, have a significant obligation to reign in the freedoms we've given away. For Freedom given away, is freedom lost. With the Bush administration soon to be a historical footnote, it's time to take back the freedoms we borrowed to them. The Patriot Act must be fixed.