Imperial Presidency and George W. Bush

The Patriot Act was passed a month after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Contained within this Act are many provisions that grant the President and the executive branch the right to infringe upon our civil liberties. Not the least among which are the rights to pull phone records, to know what we are buying, to know what we are selling, to be searched but never even told why or even told at all, and to hold “terrorist suspects” and ignoring their rights to due process. This was all done to “protect” us, from another terrorist attack, but many, myself included, contend that we are taking away freedoms in the name of protecting freedom.

Bush on foreign policy has done nothing but to alienate our enemies so that any hopes of negotiation seem more and more unlikely, by calling them “evil,” and has shunned international approval, by entering into the Iraq War without the approval of the United Nations. He has assumed for himself, the right to fight anyone and everyone in the name of defeating terrorism, and Congress has played second fiddle to all of his wishes.

President Bush made this comment after renewing the Patriot Act about the congressional Oversight Committee, a group designed to watch his every move, he said that he, “did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act’s expanded police powers.”

Around September 11, 2001 President Bush signed an executive order, a declaration issued by the president or by a governor that has the force of law, that the NSA may tap American’s phone lines if they happened to be communicating with someone in another country, without a warrant. The opportunity for abuse is unquestionable, and I personally don’t trust my government with the task of keeping its curiosity in check.

In the end, I don’t feel any safer about the world I live in after President Bush. He has seized more power for the executive branch and the Presidency in the past 6 years than all the other President’s did over years of stockpiling little doctrines and ideas. He seems to think that the Government has the right to invade the lives of American’s in the name of protection, and that whoever we disagree with in the world, we shall always disagree with and it is right to merely call them “evil,” and attack them at will. How Bush has gotten away with not being called a dictator or at least someone laying the groundwork for a dictatorship is beyond me. This country was founded on the will of the people, not the misguided interpretations of law by one man.