As Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut stood in the well of the Senate on the morning of December 17 2007, he spoke nominally about the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 and a provision within it for the immunity of telecommunications corporations from lawsuits. But more broadly he spoke about the role of trust in the dark, where the light of knowledge has been turned off:
Here we are, facing a final decision on whether the telecommunications companies will get off the hook for good. The president’s allies are as intent as they ever were on making that happen. They want immunity back in this bill at all costs.
But what they’re truly offering is secrecy in place of openness. Fiat in place of law.
And in place of the forthright argument and judicial deliberation that ought to be this country’s pride, two simple words from our president’s mouth: “Trust me.”
I cannot speak for my colleagues, but I would never take that offer, not even in the best of times, not even from a perfect president. I would never take that offer because our Constitution tells us that the president’s word is subject to the oversight of the Congress and the deliberation of the courts; and because I took an oath to defend the Constitution; and because I stand by my oath.
“Trust me.” It is the offer to hide ourselves in the waiting arms of the rule of men. And in these threatened times, that offer has never seemed more seductive. The rule of law has rarely been so fragile.
“It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger…from abroad.” James Madison, the father of our Constitution, made that prediction more than two centuries ago. With the passage of this bill, his words would be one step closer to coming true. So it has never been more essential that we lend our voices to the law, and speak on its behalf.
On its behalf, we say to President Bush that a nation of truly free men and women would never take “trust me” for an answer, not even from a perfect president—and certainly not from him.
In these times—under a president who seems every more day intent on acting as if he is the law, who grants himself the right to ignore legislation, who claims the power to spy without a warrant, to imprison without a hearing, to torture without a scruple—in these times, I would be a fool to take his offer.
But “trust me,” says President Bush. He means it literally. When he first asked Congress to make the telecoms’ actions legally disappear, Congress had a reasonable question for him: Can we at least know exactly what we’d be immunizing? Can you at least tell us what we’d be cleaning up?
And the president refused to answer. Only he, his close advisors, and a handful of telecom executives know all of the facts. Congress is only asked to give token oversight.
But if we are to do our Constitutionally-mandated job, we need more than token oversight; we need full hearings on the terrorist surveillance program before the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees.
Without that, we remain in the dark—and in the dark we’re expected to grant the president’s wish, because he knows best.
Are you eager to hide in the waiting arms of a big daddy president who knows best and will take care of you, the citizen as child? Then the post-2001 system of rule in the United States suits you. But that is not what the Constitution, the compact made between a nation’s citizens so long ago, expects of us. The Constitution expects of us that we will think and act as adults and shoulder the adult responsibility of open knowledge, free deliberation, and distributed decision-making. Sam Adams, a contemporary of James Madison, put it another way:
If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.
The coalition of Republicans and Democrats who maintain the post-2001 system of authoritarian rule prefer to think of the citizen as a child, or perhaps a dog. It may be that they wish to protect us. But is also undeniably true that it is easier to rule a lesser than it is to rule a peer. Watch out for those who would turn you from a peer into a lesser, or having already done that, keep you that way.
Listen to those who, like Christopher Dodd, remind you that you are not small, not a child, not the government’s dog.
(Source: Speech of Chris Dodd on Morning of December 17 2007)
