President Bush Should Go to Congress

Trust in the beneficent intentions of the most powerful officials in government is not a secure foundation for liberty. I'm astonished that so few Americans on the right are now willing to concede the truth of this statement. I understand that some of them truly believe, and more of them are prepared to argue, that the very existence of our republic is threatened by Islamic terrorism. I understand that there are now, as there were not a century ago, nightmare scenarios according to which a few well-funded, well-organized miscreants could wreak unthinkable havoc on our people.

I differ with the "strong executive" conservatives concerning the procedures we, as a nation, ought to employ in assessing the risks and adjusting our civil liberties traditions in accordance with the assessment. I believe that congress should be involved in this process of evaluating the competing risks of retaining civil liberties traditions and remaining vulnerable to the potential of terrorists equipped with weapons of mass destruction, or risking domestic tyranny and enjoying security against threats from abroad. One of the pillars of our American way of life is faith that the truth is most likely to prevail in an unconstrained argument, and it is a pillar I am unwilling to surrender to Osama Bin Laden, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Our founding fathers never envisioned our present dilemma because, among other things, they never envisioned our nation going to war, and our president claiming the plenary range of "commander in chief" powers within our own borders, without a formal congressional declaration of war.

I believe it's in that spirit of our Constitution to argue that, if an executive unwilling to seek a formal declaration of war believes a new type of threat requires new limitations on traditional rights (read "the right of American citizens not to be searched without a warrant from a court", or "the right of Americans citizens imprisoned by their government to be charged, confront their accusers, and have their day in court"), the executive ought to be required to persuade the legislature to agree, before being empowered to proceed. Not to put too fine a point on it, it seems self-evident.