How
one Democrat, one Republican, and one American in exile fought back against
bulk surveillance.
Let’s now praise a threesome of odd bedfellows: a Democratic
ex-senator, an exiled American citizen, and a current Republican senator.
I don’t think they’ve ever met, yet their separate efforts over
14 years have now guided our ship of state away from some perilous
authoritarian straits.
First came Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a former Democratic
senator who refused in October 2001 to sacrifice our fundamental liberties to
the fears and rank political opportunism that followed the horrific 9/11
terrorist attacks.
The Bush-Cheney regime was using 9/11 as an excuse to hustle
their liberty-busting “USA PATRIOT Act” into law. But Feingold dared to object,
pointing out that it would impose a 1984-ish secret security state over our
freedoms. He was the lone senator to vote against it.
Just as he warned, the act proved to be deeply unpatriotic. But Congress, the media, and We the People were kept in the dark about it — until 2013, when a young security analyst named Edward Snowden blew the whistle. He revealed that cyber-snoops were collecting and storing all of our phone records.
The spy establishment retaliated by forcing Snowden into Russian
exile. Yet their dirty deeds were now exposed, roiling the public and
increasing congressional opposition to this wholesale invasion of our privacy.
Enter Rand Paul, a Republican senator and longtime libertarian
opponent of PATRIOT Act madness. That law had to be renewed by June 1, and the
establishment assumed no lawmaker would dare block it.
Paul did. He used 11th hour procedural moves to force a rewrite
that ended some of its worst intrusions, including the government’s bulk
collection of our phone calls.
Liberty depends on people like Feingold, Snowden, and Paul
daring to put themselves on the line to steer America away from
authoritarianism. That’s what patriots do.
OtherWords
columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker.
He’s also editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. OtherWords.org.