There's an unfortunate reality here which is that the Government can't really prevent terrorist attacks. Israel is much smaller and they've tried much harder and they can't prevent them so the U.S. stands very little chance.
So another attack will happen some day. It's a given (and both the Bush and Obama administrations have said as much)
That's where the Patriot Act comes in. Every politician believes it would be the death of their career if they change or reject the existing law only to have that inevitable terrorist attack take place right after. And given how irrationally people act after an attack the politicians are probably right.
So we're stuck with the Patriot Act until politicians become brave or the public stops acting irrationally after an attack. I won't be holding my breath.
This is not a new phenomenon: JFK even wrote a book about it, titled "Profiles in Courage": The book profiles senators who crossed party lines and/or defied the public opinion of their constituents to do what they felt was right and suffered severe criticism and losses in popularity because of their actions. [1]
So sometimes the right thing to do is the unpopular thing. But that's not new. While democracy is great at preventing certain abuses of power which clearly hurt the populace at large. Hence, it is also good at preventing violent uprising. So while it comes up with good solutions to some problems, the democratic process we have doesn't come up with the right solution to every problem, terrorism being a good example. This notion is much older than JFK, of course. One purpose of the Bill of Rights was explicitly anti-democratic: put in a general way, it prohibits the majority from oppressing inherent rights of minorities.
In theory, it is the role of the courts to strike down such laws as unconstitutional. In practice, this doesn't seem to happen very quickly, Japanese internment serving as one historical comparison [2]. But the sky has not fallen, former transgressions were greater, and like them, this too, shall pass.
What is novel about the current political climate in the US, as far as I can tell, is the extent of the influence money has in politics, and the magnitude of such money being spent. The best chronicle of this I've read is "So Much Damned Money" [3]. This is a problem worth fretting over.
So much damned money that someone apparently bought the rights to the ancient word "corruption" and prevents people from using it. It's bad for business.
For the record, the United States interned first generation Japanese-Americans, Italian-Americans and German-Americans. They were still denied due process which is definitely unfortunate, but they weren't interned because of the color of their skin. I think that is what a lot of people hint at by always mentioning the Japanese internment, but not mentioning Italian or German.
The internment of these German-Americans almost certainly saved American lives by denying the German American Bund Party (Nazi Sympathizers) from being able to engage in espionage and sabotage.
Furthermore, I have a problem calling them internment camps considering how completely different they were from the kind of internment camps the Nazi's ran.
> Israel is much smaller and they've tried much harder and they can't prevent them so the U.S. stands very little chance.
Actually, Israel has mostly prevented them. They still get rockets shot at them (which they probably could stop if they didn't have any ethical constraints), but suicide bombings have mostly stopped, and not for lack of attempts.
More accurately, the government can prevent terrorist attacks, but that will take sophisticated and unpopular foreign policy measures. The Patriot Act, security theater, war, and other such nonsense is easier to sell to voters and lobbies.
I think the implication above is that you can't prevent _every_ terrorist attack. I think that's a pretty defensible argument to make.
Geography alone makes it pretty obvious that you can't stop a determined group from carrying out an attack. So that leaves making nice with those groups so that they don't want to attack us.
Given the fact that there are radical groups at either end of just about any political or religious spectrum you can think of, the idea of appeasing all of them is nuts. The very actions necessary to appease one group could incite another to attack.
This is, of course, putting aside the idea that the motivation behind some violence isn't motivated by our actions at all, but rather by internal politics within extremist groups. There are a lot of folks out there who are awfully fond of power, and one of the easiest ways to garner power is to rally people against a common enemy (who cares if that "enemy" actually instigated anything... that's easy enough to spin)
So, all that to say... We're never going to prevent every terrorist attack, we can only work to minimize the collateral damage. In my opinion, the Patriot Act is just about the biggest example of collateral damage we've seen resulting from terrorist attacks, and I'm saddened to see that Congress chose to do nothing to limit that.
Use of violence to further political agenda is hardly a new phenomena. The straw man argument puts forward the "terrorist" as a new kind of threat to society which, alas, forces the good people hired by the internationals to represent the people to throw out the baby and bath water of "Inalienable" Rights, Due Process, Rule of Law, and civilized norms so that (apparently completely incompetent) security apparatus can prevent cave men with box cutters defeating the security envelope of the United States of America (aka the "empire" LOL).
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Dear framers, your posterity does NOT deserve the "Blessings of Liberty". Now, respectfully, why don't you roll over cause that is the only revolution that USA and your posterity can muster at this point.
Actually those measures are popular among regular (meaning non-powerful) people. Both the left and the right are in favor of a non-interventionist foreign policy in the US.
I don't really get this. How many people can name their representatives or senators? My guess is about 10%. If they don't know who you are, they can't blame you for terrorist attacks.
(I know, your opponents and the media can blame you. Just mention something about how you're against gay marriage, or something, and people will forget all about terrorism...)
They know who their senator is after his opponent starts flooding the airwaves with "$SENATOR name voted against protecting american citizens" overlayed against video of a terrorist attack.
But they do that anyway. There is always a hot button issue, and your opponent always voted against it.
Bush deserted from the military and used cocaine, and that didn't affect his presidency at all. So there is probably some factor other than voter outrage here.
And anyway, the Patriot Act has very little to do with terrorism. Let's not let idiots run our country.
It's a little late for that, isn't it? Our politicians are concerned with image, vanity, and self-service much more than the substance of anything that actually gets passed.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of problems similar to that also. The national debt, for example. No one will elect a politician that says "I'm going to work to cut government programs and raise taxes so that we can pay off our debt."
And given how irrationally people act after an attack the politicians are probably right. So we're stuck with the Patriot Act until politicians become brave or the public stops acting irrationally after an attack.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
So another attack will happen some day. It's a given (and both the Bush and Obama administrations have said as much)
That's where the Patriot Act comes in. Every politician believes it would be the death of their career if they change or reject the existing law only to have that inevitable terrorist attack take place right after. And given how irrationally people act after an attack the politicians are probably right.
So we're stuck with the Patriot Act until politicians become brave or the public stops acting irrationally after an attack. I won't be holding my breath.