Nothing to Hide

Tom Tomorrow weighs in on the "if you have nothing to hide..." argument in favor of Bush's warrantless surveillance of American citizens.

I don't know if the good citizens who chant this mantra are really as virtuous as they claim, of course. I don't know if they have any toys stashed under the bed that they'd rather their neighbors didn't know about, if there are any items of clothing they like to wear when no one else is around, if they fudge the numbers on their tax returns or maybe drink a little more than they should or drive too fast or have phone conversations that they don't want their spouses to know about or indulge, one way or another, in any one of a myriad of minor sins which are not unfamiliar to most human beings. But more likely, they're just not thinking in those terms. What they mean is, "If I'm not planning a terrorist attack, I have nothing to worry about." Oblivious to the lessons of history, they're not thinking about anything else. They're not worried about the abuse of power because they just can't imagine themselves as the target of an abusive government. They see themselves as Right Thinking Citizens, and when push comes to shove, they imagine that the policeman or the FBI agent will notice the flag pin on their lapel and give them a knowing wink and move on down the line to harass some dirty America-hating ACLU type who deserves to be harassed by the government.

He gets it exactly right. Those who ignore, wink at, shrug off or otherwise support or enable Bush's power grab are doing so in large measure because they are confident that they will always be the "us" and never the "them" in the calculus of "it's us or them." It is only when the cross hairs drift over to their side of the line that they are inspired to say, "whoah!" By then, of course, it is almost always too late.