Patriot Act II merits alarm
COMMENTARY
Josh McDonald

As the focus of national attention draws ever tighter on the looming war with Iraq, a proposed piece of new legislation has activists alarmed, and rightfully so. The Department of Justice’s Patriot Act II, an expansion of the post-Sept. 11 law designed to help better combat terrorism, would give even more power to law enforcement agencies. In particular, it would allow the government to deny requests under the Freedom of Information Act about suspects detained for terrorist activities, to hold such suspects without bail and to revoke citizenship rights for those who are affiliated with any organization labeled as terrorist. The most startling feature of the proposal, however, is the possible creation of a terrorist database, which would contain DNA identification on anyone suspected of being a terrorist.

If enacted, Patriot II would only further the damage to civil liberties incurred by its predecessor. It would continue the invasive and threatening practices already in place, but perhaps more alarmingly, it would allow the government to cover those practices in a shroud of secrecy. While the justice department has refused to comment on the legislation, citing it as nothing more than office brainstorming, the mere timing of this leak is itself highly suspect. Democratic representatives John Conyers Jr., Robert Scott and Sheila Jackson, in a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft, accuse the justice department of “using the war on terrorism as a partisan political tool” and “waiting to spring this bill on the Congress when the nation once again has endured a terrorist attack or is in the midst of war.” Their dissent against Patriot II is surprising, especially given the rather high support given its predecessor by we the people.

It is time, though, for this support to end. While most Americans paid scant attention to the details of the first Patriot Act and some lawmakers reportedly passed it without even having read a word, this new proposal must not receive a similar treatment. Or, at the least, if we are not alarmed by future threats, perhaps we can heed the ghosts of our past. The horrors of McCarthyism and of Japanese-Americans imprisoned in detention camps should serve as a reminder of what we’re capable of when the narrow-minded focus on the enemy overcomes our better judgment.

As legal philosopher and NYU professor Ronald Dworkin wrote in the aftermath of the original Patriot Act, “what our enemies mainly hope to achieve through their terror is the destruction of the values that they hate and we cherish. We must protect those values as well as we can, even as we fight them. That is difficult: it requires discrimination, imagination and candor. But it is what patriotism now demands.”

With the “war on terror” ongoing and a conflict with Saddam mere weeks away, the demands of patriotism grow ever more insistent. Let us hope, this time around, that more Americans will rise to meet them.

Josh McDonald is a senior English and philosophy major from Garland. He can be reached at (j.r.mcdonald@tcu.edu).