I haven’t said much …

I haven’t said much about the Bush administration’s Total Information Awareness program, partially because others have had so much to say about it that I agree with that I figured it wasn’t worth adding a small “me too” to it all. I don’t like the idea of the government gathering more and more data that they “promise” won’t be misused, because they have such an awful record of keeping those promises. But now it’s been released that the Pentagon has financed a project at the Georgia Institute of Technology to identify people by the way they walk. (Never mind that in Atlanta, everybody drives and almost nobody ever walks anymore.) This is getting (more) out of hand.

So why, one might ask, would a supposedly smaller-government Republican president unleash such a multi-tentacled beast on the country? That’s an eminently good question, and I think I have a possible answer to this.

George Bush has surrounded himself with advisors who give their opinions on policy decisions. Unlike the previous administration, however, he didn’t just chose yesmen/yeswomen. He has high-ranking members who have disagreed with him on a number of occasions (e.g. Sec. of State Colin Powell) and even has holdovers from the previous administration (e.g. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, Commerce Secretary under President Clinton). Critics of Bush have pointed to dissention in the ranks as a sign of weakness in his administration, but in fact they show a strength that is often misunderstood and mislabelled. George Bush can handle critics and he doesn’t need to be coddled. Further, he knows that opposing opinions, to differing extents, are useful in honing one’s own views. Searching for the grains of truth in thoughts you otherwise disagree with can help you make better decisions.

Unfortunately, sometimes more than those grains are extracted. I believe this is what has brought us the TIA program. There is an element in this country that believes that any sort of adversity, great or small, requires a government response. Often, for this element, seeing the government doing something, anything, regardless of how effective or ineffective it is, is enough. It is this liberal element, the “bigger government is better government” crowd, that is, I believe, responsible for this runaway trampling of constitutional rights. Those on the “American street” find solace in a decree from Washington. Those in government find more power and money. Neither of these make us any safer, and in the buckshot approach to terrorism, more innocents will wind up hurt than those who are guilty.

I think Bush has listened to the wrong folks on this issue. I think he felt he had to do something after 9/11, and do it quickly, but took some bad advice on what to do. Conservatives want smaller government because what we have now is so out of hand and so intrusive. Our liberties are being curtailed, and this had been going on long before that awful day in 2001.

Dubya needs to get back to his conservative advisors and back to his own conservatism on this one before this new bureaucracy takes on a life of its own (if it hasn’t done so already). We’re giving up liberty for security, and as Ben Franklin said, in that trade, we’ll lose them both.

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