Thanks to this The Odds Are One post that quoted from Laura Rozen's War and Peace, I have been able to make more significant sense of all the uproar over domestic spying. I quote portions of Rozen's post:. . . it is very interesting that so much of the discomfort with and
resistance to growing police state provisions -- without a national debate, without a national consensus -- is coming from inside the agencies, the courts, from those who take what their mission is supposed to be seriously. In every agency, there are abuses and people who abuse their powers, but many many people who work in these agencies, in the courts, in intelligence and law enforcement, take the public trust part of their mission seriously and deeply want at some fundamental level the confidence of the American public. . .It's no accident that there is no American literature celebrating imperial presidential powers, celebrating a president operating in secret to expand his powers while citing
national security threats, celebrating, in short, demagoguery. No great American literature or Hollywood movie has rewarded trampling on the Constitution. No celebrations of the US waterboarding detainees. What is our whole national literature about? . . .It's about doing the right thing. Not only that - it's about the right thing prevailing, being rewarded. It's about justice prevailing over injustice. . .
The system, we would be assured, works. It would retract back to normalcy.
Happening across this thoughtful narrative was like a Christmas gift for me. Now I can go about my holidays with my feet on the ground and pointed forward. I will be back to posting after a short hiatus for celebrating.
To my readers, have happy holidays and a good 2006.
Tags: literature domestic surveillance Laura Rozen intelligence community
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