Exactly ten years ago today, President Bush signed into law one of the most controversial yet effective pieces of legislation of the last generation. Leftists as well as some conservatives have reviled the Patriot Act for much of this last decade, but the most remarkable thing about this anniversary is the complacence with which most Americans continue to regard the law.
Despite the furious charges heard from liberals that Bush and his Republican-controlled Congress had effectively put a stake through the heart of American liberty, the vast majority of Americans understand that the law has provided vital assistance to law enforcement agencies as they have successfully prevented a repeat of 9/11. Just as important, they are cognizant of the fact that despite the worries about the growing power of the intelligence establishment, their freedom is basically undiminished.
That this is so would have been a surprise to anyone who listened to the increasingly shrill attacks on both Bush and the Patriot Act during his second term in office. By 2008, one of the standard themes of the liberal critique of his administration was that the War on Terror had fundamentally eroded American liberty. The use of wiretapping by the National Security Agency, the existence of the Guantanamo Bay prison and the question of torture were all essential elements of a narrative that saw Bush and Vice President Cheney using the Patriot Act to subvert democracy.
One of the main reasons why the relentless drumbeat of attacks along these lines on American security policy has ceased in the last three years is that Barack Obama has embraced the Patriot Act as well as many of the counter-terror strategies championed by Bush and Cheney. Just last May, Obama signed a bill extending three provisions of the act — roving wiretaps, court-ordered searches of business records and surveillance of non-American “lone wolf” suspects without confirmed ties to terrorist groups — for four years. The ACLU and a minority of liberals may have been appalled, but most Americans yawned.
The post 9/11 world has created some institutions and practices that do intrude into the lives of many Americans such as the TSA pat downs and heightened airport security that many conservatives despise. Yet despite this, only extremists would contest the fact that the over-the-top rhetoric heard from the left about the destructive impact of the Patriot Act on the American way of life has proven false. American democracy continues to flourish. And the government’s ability to foil more than two dozen al-Qaeda plots — some with the help of “enhanced interrogation” techniques — has left most citizens confident that, despite annoyances at the airport, their government is exercising its prime responsibility to protect the homeland in a manner consistent with both the nature of the Islamist threat and respect for the Constitution.
The Patriot Act has shown that under both Republican and Democratic administrations it is possible for the federal government to take action against terror without compromising the freedoms Americans rightly consider their birthright. The mere fact this date has gone without much comment proves the tenth anniversary of the Patriot Act is on the whole a happy one indeed.
