By snoadmin
In an effort to thwart terrorism Thursday, the House passed a bill extending the provisions of the Patriot Act another year. The bill, which passed in the Senate on Wednesday, will presumably be signed into law.
The passage of the bill, in its form, is yet another political blow to Democrats in both the House and Senate.
A bipartisan majority in the Senate Judiciary Committee revised the Patriot Act to include provisions that aim to protect the privacy rights of people living in the United States while at the same time allowing the bill to carry out what it is intended to do.
However, this form of the bill was not passed — Democrats were unable to secure a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate.
Is the Democrat caucus that weak or does the majority of Congress actually believe in sacrificing civil liberties for unproven protection?
Proponents of the Patriot Act sight recent terror acts in efforts to highlight the need for such legislation. But, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber and Nidal Malek Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, only highlight the failures of the act.
If the American public is expected to surrender such an overwhelming amount of freedom, a bomb should never explode on an airplane and a man should never murder 13 people on a U.S. military base.
Absolute privacy destroys the government’s ability to protect its citizens. Absolute governmental power destroys American freedom. Partisan legislation, with respect to this issue, molds law to these two extremes — something the American people do not need.
Bipartisanship, which is intelligent compromise, molds law through moderation. This moderation is what creates functional legislation.
The American two-party system works when middle ground is found. However, when Democrats simply yield to Republican partisanship, moderation is lost and the extreme prevails.
Democrats in Congress have been steamrolled by Republicans. And because the majority party is yielding to the minority party nothing — that can be deemed beneficial to the American public — is coming out of Congress.
Conservatism, which, in most cases, is inherently passive, has obstructed a naturally ambitious liberal agenda.
It is as if the roles of these two political beliefs have been reversed bringing American government to a standstill.
This editorial is not so much a criticism of the Patriot Act as it is a criticism of Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Conservatives and liberals need to work together with the goal of methodical, organic reform that assesses the needs of our time.
Government cannot remain changeless, and when liberals yield to the stagnate nature of conservatives, nothing gets done.
Democrats need to push health care reform, banking reform and untraditional protections of our freedom with the very fervor that Republicans use to resist these reforms.
At one point in American history our health care system may have been functional but now it is not. At one point a laissez-faire fiscal policy may have worked but now it does not.
Republicans need to understand that progress or change is inherently liberal and that when the liberal voice of this country pushes for change they should not practice a policy of obstruction but rather attempt to create method out of the madness of change.
The Senate Judiciary Committee created a bill with this understanding but it was shot down by partisan extremism. It seems like the American two-party system has abandoned method settling for a battle over power.
This country has the ability to coexist and compromise. It was conservatism that created our Constitution but it was liberalism that added the Bill of Rights. It was liberalism that called for American independence but it was conservatism that laid down order afterward. Somewhere in our near-200 year history this balance has been lost.
