Conservatives and Their Responsibility for the Liberal-run Security State

The liberals hold the many powers of the State and, without question, use them to trample liberty AND democracy in our country. We see it everyday in the use of the DOJ to attack the rights of states; the campaign against gun ownership by law abiding persons; the growth in power of regulatory agencies such as the EPA; the abuses by the IRS; the insanity of Obamacare and what it means for the economy and liberty; the use of "immigration reform" as a means to create yet another class of voters beholden to the Democratic machine; the endless stoking of racial hatred, and on and on. Many times well-intentioned conservatives do not understand or appreciate that the liberals do not care about the bad state of the economy; high unemployment, rising poverty rates, and labor unrest, in fact, are good for the liberal agenda. They lead to increased calls for action by the state, for more programs, more regulations, more CONTROL over once independent sources of power and influence.

In recent days, I have been thinking about developments since the attack of 9/11/2001, and recall the steady drumbeat afterwards to do away with the (in)famous "wall" that separated intelligence gathering and law enforcement. The most famous proponent of that "wall" was of course the otherwise self-serving Democrat hack millionaire and former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. She was, in the words of the Washington Times, "personally responsible for instituting a key obstacle to cooperation between law enforcement and intelligence operations before the terrorist attacks [of 9/11]." While at DOJ, she wrote a memo which made it extremely difficult for the FBI and the CIA to cooperate against terrorism. Again, quoting from the WT,

Gorelick (the No. 2 official in the Clinton Justice Department) on March 4, 1995, to FBI Director Louis Freeh and Mary Jo White, the New York-based U.S. attorney investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In the memo, Ms. Gorelick ordered Mr. Freeh and Ms. White to follow information-sharing procedures that “go beyond what is legally required,” in order to avoid “any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance” that the Justice Department was using Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, instead of ordinary criminal investigative procedures, in an effort to undermine the civil liberties of terrorism suspects.

Lots of us on the right, myself included, felt outrage over the restrictions on information sharing. I had personal experience with this issue overseas, where I saw that one agency could not share certain information with another. It made no sense then, and I still remain highly critical of the motivation behind the building of the "wall," i.e., to protect terrorism suspects--not to protect the overall liberties of Americans.

The consequences of this lack of sharing became visible on that morning of September 11, 2001. The reaction to that attack was, of course, to try to "fix" things so that another attack could not happen. There was a rush to create new structures with new powers, free of past restrictions. I have to say, I never could understand the logic of creating a Department of Homeland Security. First, I found the name itself very anti-American; we do not refer to the homeland, a very European or even dystopian future scifi novel term replete with all sorts of Orwellian implications. Second, I saw good agencies forced to merge with ones that were not so good. Third, I found the size of the DHS that emerged as overwhelming, and, quite frankly, way too unwieldy to serve as an effective CT tool. I have to admit, however, that I liked the knocking down of the "wall," and in my desire to wreak vengeance on the perpetrators of 9/11, failed to think through the implications for liberty. I know that I was not alone in that failure.

We conservatives, therefore, conspired in building the superstate. The liberals, of course, are much better at taking over such a superstate than are conservatives, who, ironically, have long had a very valid mistrust of such a state. The liberals know that when you create programs and the agencies to implement them, you create groups with a vested interest in seeing those programs and agencies expand in reach and size. These groups consist of people who vote and agitate for the programs and agencies that now provide them a livelihood. Look, for example, at the extreme reaction, dutifully hyped by the lapdog media, to the tiny "sequester" of federal funds. One would think that the world had come to an end because X agency would get 6% more money in the next budget cycle rather than the 6.1% it had expected.

We conservatives, for good motives, i.e., kill the bastards who attacked us, helped the liberals create a leviathan now controlled, of course, by the left and focusing its activities not on killing those bastards who attacked, but on monitoring us and using the state's great powers to accumulate wealth for themselves and suppress dissent.

WLA