Widely reported is the fact that Georgie authorized phone taps on phone calls. “It’s vital to our national security” they say. Many people believe this, not caring that any civil liberties we give up for “security” are still liberties lost.

Less reported is that the huge government database program, Total Information Awareness or TIA, continues to exist, despite the fact that it was seemingly stopped by congress before it even started two years ago. This truly Orwellian program captures and logs the credit card purchases, Internet usage, reading materials, bank transactions and phone calls of American citizens, who, last I checked, had Constitutional provisions protecting from just this thing.

That this program continues was first reported by National Journal reporter Shane Harris, who was on Democracy Now on 2/27/06. Download the show and give it a listen. I’ve heard many-a-time from my friends and, unfortunately, family: “I have nothing to hide”, as if that’s all the reason in the world for the government to poke around in someone else’s business. If only that same mentality (workingforchange.com) could be applied to the Bush administration.

So now the question is: What are our means to combat this blatant disregard of civil liberties? It seems there are few lawmakers who care, or at least who care to take up the issue. Possbily this is because no one has made much of a stink about this- it’s just not well known yet.

I feel that as liberals, we’re going to have to quit trying to right every wrong we see, and focus on a couple key issues. Baby steps. A good start, because we have the law clearly on our side, are our civil liberties. We cannot let this happen in the name of “security”, because when will it end? It’s a damn slippery slope, and the conservatives know this. One of the books coming up in Reading Liberally is “Don’t Think of an Elephant” in which the author talks about ’slippery slopes’ being a tool in the conservative arsenal. They know that if you can change a group’s belief in the premise, the whole argument naturally falls in your favor- the premise here being that “we have to do it for national security”. Fear is a powerful weapon, and if you can start with that to help change the premise, it’s just a matter of time before you have complete control.