According to a Pew Research Center poll released on July 26, 2013, 56% of Americans believe that the courts have not provided adequate limits on what is collected by the NSA. In addition, 70% of those surveyed believe that the government is using the data collected by the NSA for purposes other than anti-terror. Even more interesting is that 63% of those surveyed believe that the government has been lying about the NSA collecting only metadata and believe that the NSA is in fact collecting what is being said in phone calls and e-mails. However, the most interesting result from the Pew poll on the NSA is that 27% of those surveyed believe that the government has specifically listened to their phone calls or read their e-mails.
Overall, 47% of Americans believe that government anti-terror policies have gone too far in restricting civil liberties while 35% believe that government anti-terror policies have not gone far enough to protect the country. This marks a major change from recent American attitudes on this issue. In 2010, 58% of Americans surveyed in a similar Pew Research poll said that government anti-terror policies had not gone far enough to protect the country while only 27% said that these policies went too far in restricting civil liberties.
Statists and die hard Obama apologists are likely to say that all this simply means that Tea Party blowhards and tin foil hat wearing paranoids are scaring many Americans with disinformation. Civil libertarians are likely to say that this poll data indicates that many Americans are waking up and realizing the prescience of Senator Frank Church's 1975 warning about the NSA:
"Th[e National Security Agency's] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."
Despite all this, half of those surveyed still voiced support for the NSA surveillance program while only 44% indicated disapproval. Why the disconnect? If so many believe that the NSA is lying and so many believe that the courts are not doing enough to protect Americans from the NSA, then how can half support the NSA data collection program?
This apparent disconnect begins to make more sense when we examine approval/disapproval of the NSA data collection program among members of the two political parties. Among Republicans, 44% approve and 50% disapprove. Among Independents, 47% approve and 48% disapprove. Among Democrats, 57% approve and 36% disapprove.
Do you see what is going on here? If you are a staunch supporter of the GOP, don't bash Democrats just yet. In a 2006 Pew Research Poll conducted on American attitudes toward the Bush warrantless wiretap program, 75% of Republicans approved while only 37% of Democrats approved.
Now it all begins to make sense. It also all begins to be even more sickening. What Democrats and Republicans both seem to agree on concerning unconstitutional violations of the Fourth Amendment by the NSA is that such dastardly actions are perfectly fine as long as their party's candidate is sitting in the Oval Office. In essence, for far too many Americans, fidelity to the Constitution does not matter as much as whether the commander-in-chief is a donkey or an elephant. For these citizens, politics is akin to sports. For the Yankees fan, when a Red Sox player steals signs from the Yankees catcher, he is a dirty cheater. However, for that same fan, when a Yankees player steals signs from the Red Sox catcher, he is playing heads up baseball. But the machinations of politicians and security agencies are not the same as the antics of professional athletes. Far more is at stake. For most of us, the outcome of a sporting event has little effect on our lives. We cheer or groan when the game is over and then move on. However, the malfeasance of security agencies like the NSA has profound effects on our privacy, our rights, and our freedom.
When rabid partisanship becomes more important than Constitutional principles and natural rights, then the nation has devolved into a system of tyranny of the majority. When this happens, the nation has transformed into a democratic banana republic. When a party is in power, it can oppress its opponents to its heart's content. While members of the minority party may not like this, they just have to grin and bear it until the next election. When their party regains control of the White House, then it's pay back time!
But is this the kind of country we want? Is this variety of political moral relativism a good thing? Isn't the moral rightness or wrongness of an action independent of whether the actor is a donkey or an elephant? Isn't the Constitution and the natural rights that it upholds more important than which party's candidate is living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? The danger created by the widespread worship of political parties is one which threatens every American.
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