— by Odysseus
Some commentators have noted with justified concern that the Internal Revenue Service scandal becomes even more alarming when you consider that this is the agency that will be “administering” Obamacare. If the Internal Revenue Service is willing to target for audit individuals and groups because of their political views, will they also be willing to deny medical treatment to an administration’s political opponents? It should utterly terrify every American. This is no longer idle speculation or “far fetched”. The evidence produced already has made this a real possibility, and we have only scratched the surface. However, even this bombshell is merely the penultimate question, and, so far, the media has not reported where this scandal truly leads.
The Problem:
If the Internal Revenue Service will act on citizens at the behest of a sitting administration for political reasons, what other parts of the bureaucracy are doing the same? As supposedly “politically neutral” bureaucracies, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, and all the multifarious tentacles of the Department of Homeland Security are no different than the IRS. What about the Postal Inspection Service, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Naval Investigative Service? There are 16 acknowledged organizations within the “intelligence services”, and that is not even counting all those parts of the federal bureaucracy that have designated status as “Law Enforcement”.
Since the Patriot Act, the domestic spying powers of the government have expanded to lengths and depths that the public cannot even imagine. As the security apparatus was erected following World War II, its creators were concerned with protecting liberty, and that these security organs would never become the means to install the kind of tyranny that had arisen in Germany and the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War, and afterwards into the 1990s, the reach, depth, and breadth of information gathering by the government was intentionally curtailed to protect citizens’ privacy. It was understood that this lack of efficiency was necessary to protect other higher values. Some “losses” had to be accepted because the cost of perfect “protection” was to erect the perfect police state.
It was not complete protection of privacy and liberty, abuses took place, but these were in violation of the rules. We have records of the FBI’s surveillance of civil rights leaders, Hollywood personalities, and political figures, but we have little evidence that information was being used to actually target the political foes of an administration. Most importantly, “sharing” information between intelligence gathering agencies on foreign threats and domestic law enforcement agencies was prohibited. This was designed to protect United States citizens from being spied upon or persecuted.
In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the various security apparatuses sought out new reasons to justify their continued existence and budgets. They re-focused on “the War on Drugs” and turned frighteningly inward. They lobbied for expanded domestic powers and for the tearing down of the information walls that had been in place to protect liberties. Fortunately, the proposed Bill Clinton era banking “know your customer” laws and intelligence aggregating efforts like “Eschelon” were exposed and rejected by a liberty-oriented Congress.
That willingness to embrace the value of limited government collapsed on September 11, 2001 nearly as quickly as the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Although initially, President George W. Bush announced his position that there was no need for a major shakeup of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies and structures, he eventually acquiesced to the pressure to “do something dramatic”. The Orwellian “Department of Homeland Security” was created. The “Patriot Act” was enacted, and all the protections against tyranny embedded into the DNA of the security apparatuses by their far thinking World War II founders were ripped out.
The walls came down, as intelligence, military, and law enforcement, embraced and blended together with the incestuous ardor of a methamphetamine-fueled orgy in a single-family trailer park. “Total Information Awareness” was born of this union and there was a great deal of self congratulation that went on as to the new, miraculous capabilities at tracking, tracing, and interdicting terrorists. The long sought desires of the security apparatuses that were thwarted in the 1990s when they were promulgated by Clinton were wholly adopted when promulgated under Bush.
The United States created the intelligence and information equivalent of “Skynet” in the 1990s movie “The Terminator’s” to protect America from goat herders, whose most successful attack after 30 years of warfare had managed to take down one city office complex and damage several others. This author is not in any way minimizing the loss of 3,000 lives in an attack by a hostile foreign power, but, considering that the Islamist movement had been engaging its full efforts to wage war on us, at least since 1968, and this was the best they could manage in a thirty year war, was it really necessary to change our entire way of life to stop them?
George Bush’s initial impulse, that our existing structures were more than sufficient to stop this threat, was correct. The “cure” is far worse than the disease. Now the Obama administration has reminded us “why” those sweeping intelligence and law enforcement powers had been denied to the security apparatuses by their founding generation. Because when government (and politicians) have that power, eventually, they will abuse it.
Perhaps it is already too late. Perhaps “Total Information Awareness” in the hands of the Obama administration means that we are already under a “soft” tyranny from which we can never escape. What effective political opposition can ever emerge, when all of its phone calls, emails, web research patterns, book purchasing lists, circle of friends and associates, shopping patterns, banking, investments, travel, hotels, car rentals, and restaurant eating, are available to some “presidential administration”?
We are right to blanch with horror at the prospect of Obamacare where even our health care is to be placed into the politicians’ hands. This is particularly true of President Obama whose political career prior to his election campaign against John McCain had been won entirely by exposing the supposedly sealed divorce records of his opponent in the two weeks before election? Remember, this is what happened to Barack Obama’s opponent for the Illinois State Legislature. It happened again to Jack Ryan, the opponent Obama was trailing badly in his race for the United States Senate, who was forced to drop out of the race two weeks before the election, thanks to salacious allegations leaked from the sealed court documents of his child custody case with his ex-wife actress Jerri Ryan. Now, that we know of General David Petraeus’s opposition to the Obama administration’s desire to whitewash what happened in Benghazi, is it truly a coincidence that his marital infidelities were exposed so soon thereafter?
The Solution:
Knowledge is power, and knowledge of people’s private lives confers absolute power over them. Combined with nearly infinite and unknowable number of federal laws and regulations, each one a suitable tool in the hands of politically motivated “law enforcement” agents, we have the making of a deeper, more all encompassing tyranny than was ever even imagined by George Orwell or the other authors of disutopian literature. Whether it is former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, former President Richard Nixon, or current President Obama, it matters not. Politicians can never be trusted with this kind of power over us.
The American people need to demand that the perpetrators be fired, prosecuted, fined, and jailed. However, that is the very least step. What matters most is that the lesson be re-learned is not to trust the government, which we must never forget is composed of politicians after their election or appointment, with this kind of power. The “Patriot Act” must be repealed and the controls and limitations on the security apparatuses need to be restored to where they were before 9/11. We can then “adjust them” as necessary, with more careful deliberation in light of this naked political use of the IRS.
Also, too many departments and agencies of the government have sought out and been awarded “law enforcement” status, which gives them arrest powers, badges, weapons, spy gear, software, surveillance tools, armored assault vehicles, and the authority to get search warrants. They may want these toys, but they neither need nor deserve them. What is more, they endanger us as they cast about seeking reasons to use their new toys.
The government’s (read: politicians’) ability to surveil us must be curtailed by laws, not merely the ever-expanding capabilities of technology. All of these agencies must be stripped of their “law enforcement” status and that status needs to be reserved only for those very few agencies whose primary purpose is “law enforcement”. Initially, this should only be the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the United States Marshall Service, and the Secret Service.
Any other agency with “law enforcement status” should have it summarily rescinded in light of the IRS scandal, and it can re-submit its case for reinstatement, but with full public hearings to be had on each agency.Congress should be very stingy in re-awarding such status. Not only is this wise policy for liberty reasons, but fiscal ones as well. Each government agency does not need a redundant supply of fully equipped, in house agents and SWAT teams. They are free to go ask the Marshall or the FBI when they believe they need law enforcement assistance.
This solution may result in some criminal activity going unnoticed and it may result in some deaths from pressure cooker bombs, but the tree of liberty has always been watered in blood. Politicians are far more dangerous to our way of life than either criminals or terrorists. It is a price we must be willing to pay because our freedom is worth it. We must not be so desirous of “security” that we are willing to live in a 
prison.