I was going to e-mail my brother about this, but I figured that I’d post it here as well. He and I were talking on the phone the other day when the conversation came around to Bush and our respective opinions of him.
Though I didn’t vote for him, I generally supported Bush in the past. For instance, I was pleased that he was elected in the electoral college over Gore. If for no other reason, I knew that Bush was more likely to enact tax cuts than Gore (I’m not generally in favor of the government deciding “it knows best” how to spend my money).
However, after the 9/11 attacks, the USA PATRIOT Act (yes, it’s an acronym) was quickly pushed through Congress. Though under the guise of preventing terrorism, it was full of bad ideas:
- Allow for indefinite detention of non-citizens who are not terrorists on minor visa violations if they cannot be deported because they are stateless, their country of origin refuses to accept them or because they would face torture in their country of origin. […]
- Give the Attorney General and the Secretary of State the power to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations and deport any non-citizen who belongs to them. […]
- Expands the use of secret searches. Normally, a person is notified when law enforcement conducts a search. In some cases regarding searches for electronic information, law enforcement authorities can get court permission to delay notification of a search. The USA PATRIOT Act extends the authority of the government to request “secret searches” to every criminal case.
The ACLU also has this chart that compares various before-and-after effects of the act.
And, after all this, I’m not sure what I think of Bush. Sure, economic freedom is a plus, but that’s no good without civil freedom.