WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?:

Bush won't have to budge on surveillance: History shows Americans support Bill of Rights - but not for all of the people all of the time (Mark Landis, February 12, 2006, Newsday)

President George W. Bush's approval of National Security Agency surveillance of phone calls and e-mails without court-approved warrants has generated controversy that goes beyond mere partisan division. This was obvious from concerns expressed at a Senate hearing last Monday by four Republican senators and, later in the week, by Rep. Heather Wilson, a New Mexico Republican who heads a key intelligence oversight subcommittee.

Nonetheless, the first polls after the hearing showed some increase in support for what Bush calls his "terrorism surveillance program." Overall the nation remains fairly evenly divided, which means it is unlikely that Bush will have to budge much on a program that he claims is legal and necessary to keep the nation safe.

For those who believe that civil liberties such as the right to privacy should never be sacrificed merely to purchase a bit more security, the thought that roughly half the American people hold a contrary view is a difficult pill to swallow. But, historically speaking, these poll results are really not surprising.

Surveys dating as far back as the Joseph McCarthy era in the 1950s show consistently that while most Americans support the Bill of Rights as an abstract proposition, far fewer support those specific rights for all Americans all the time. This is particularly the case when the Bill of Rights is applied so as to protect various categories of despised people - communists in the 1950s, criminals since the early 1960s and terrorists today.

Here's the amazing thing, the Smart Party has sided during that time with Communists, criminals and terrorists against Americans.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 12, 2006 5:28 PM