President George W. Bush Presented with ADL’s Highest Honor

Citing his inspirational leadership in promoting democratic values worldwide when faced with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 during one of the most dramatic and consequential periods in American history; his commitment to securing Israeli-Palestinian peace; and his establishment of the United States’ first Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism; the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) presented President George W. Bush with its highest honor, the America’s Democratic Legacy Award.

The honor was conferred during the opening gala dinner of the League’s National Executive Committee Meeting, held February 6-8 in Palm Beach, Florida. …

I suppose the ADL isn’t concerned about things like the Patriot Act and consequently the massive surveillance state that ensued as well as minor things like GITMO, or extra territorial renditions (AKA kidnappings), and other things...

Funny how words like republic and democracy are thrown around.

The biggest fault of Bush and a legacy that will eventually come to tarnish his presidency isn’t the war in Iraq, nor is it a budget he was coerced into when Congress went democrat and used the Iraq war as leverage. It is the framework of regulations and policies, the shroud of national security and classification systems used to hide a massive surveillance apparatus that was put in place which will become his legacy. Without any public debate or true legal review, systems were created that violate any understanding of the 4th and 5th amendments and the US became a place no different than the “evil empire” it once referred too in the East. The difference between the US and Russia, or China, are a mere matter of polemics today. It is merely self restraint, convention, and self imposed policies and regulations within government bureaucracies that prevent wide spread misuse (which has already happened and been proven) but the systems and their capabilities are all in place.

Thanks President Bush-

> Without any public debate or true legal review, systems were created that violate any understanding of the 4th and 5th amendments and the US became a place no different than the “evil empire” it once referred too in the East. <

There was no Iron Curtain around this country, and what you say is a great exaggeration. I’m no great fan of Bush myself, but it has been routine in American history for the government to become more authoritarian in time of war or major crisis. It happened not long after the founding of the Republic with the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), and happened again during the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. In time of war maximum freedom isn’t compatible with maximum effectiveness. Each time, though, the pendulum swung back toward more freedom after the crisis diminished.

Franklin’s saying, “They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” doesn’t apply to temporarily giving up some liberty to protect the country, which history shows has happened often. (People who serve in the military give up much of their liberty — temporarily — and the rest of the people do too, to a lesser extent, in time of war.)

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t remain vigilant and oppose unjustified limitations on our freedoms (I’m concerned about Obama’s attempts to rule by executive order), but let’s not pretend that Bush went beyond what Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR had done. They were more authoritarian than he was.

The systems put in place, are they going away? It's been 13 years, do you think that Democrat or Republican, when in a position of power and benefiting from the status quo are inclined to deconstruct what has been created? Do you think the bureaucracies themselves, with their legions of GS employees and contractors have any desire to shrink this apparatus?

No, it's worse than I describe because the average layperson has no clue just how powerful “information” can be. He is ignorant, and with arguments such as “I have nothing to hide” he goes along his daily life not realizing that the US today has created an intelligence apparatus which the former East block countries wouldn't ever have imagined possible. You see, the Iron curtain was crude, primitive and in your face, it was a state where people knew they were being watched, but here it's simply subtle and non-intrusive, most of the time. The power given to government is massive, and it is mere self restraint that prevents it's abuse. Do you think people are naturally good?

Privacy in America equates to sexual and reproductive issues (a legacy of the feminist and homosexual agenda that have largely twisted what privacy is really all about), and is towards friends, family and co-workers. This is the complete antithesis of what the Constitutionally inferred concept of privacy is really intended to protect you from, the government. Ironically, the government has given itself the authority for unlimited collection, without probable cause, with indefinite retention, based on some policies that are secret, that various attorneys within the government agencies doing the surveillance interpret, but that's not an issue?

Without disclosure of the accuser or even presentation of evidence against one (6th amendment), where you have secret courts without a defense and are not public (6th amendment again), where with “NSLs” information is collected and private entities are bullied into submission and threatened if they disclose they have been served a NSL (5th amendment), where a government has simply given itself the right to collect anything electronic without a warrant or probable cause (4th amendment)... In the DDR they would keep records when college students left and returned to the dorms, who was talking to whom, etc. What exactly is the difference between that and what we do, please do explain?

Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR didn’t have the ability to record, transfer, electronically filter/review, geo locate, create linkage diagrams, put this into databases for retrieval and queries 1000 different ways, for every communication, of every person, in the entire country, did they? They simply couldn’t do what we can do today.

Bush might not have had evil intentions, but those that do the greatest evil often don’t.

And BTW, what happened to the balance of power between states and the federal government post Civil War? No, Franklin was 100% spot on and once the power shifts in one direction, it tends to never really go back the other way. Once the government stepped on the 10th amendment, it didn’t stop or reverse. Property taxes, the greater use of eminent domain... Like taxes you have an occasional reduction, but the general trend is in one direction, and so goes the trend with centralization and the power the government gives itself in general. Over all, has the government shrunk or grown in size? Over all, has the tax burden shrunk or grown? Over all, has the federal government and their intrusion in the lives of people shrunk or grown?

> In the DDR they would keep records when college students left and returned to the dorms, who was talking to whom, etc. What exactly is the difference between that and what we do, please do explain?

People were risking machine-gun fire to try to escape from the DDR. (The difference is in the aim of the information gathering. If people who may be Muslim terrorists are taking flight training in U.S. schools, I want the government to know about it.)

> ...once the power shifts in one direction, it tends to never really go back the other way...

The times we look back upon as “America, land of the brave and the free” were after the examples I gave (unless we are very old).

I’ll grant you that with improved technology it’s possible now to know many more things about individuals than in the past. I think the major risk to the country, though, comes from changes in our society itself (not from a particular law or regulation, however strengthened by improved technology). The people still have the power to push back the encroachments of government, but will they? I’m concerned about the growing tendency to prefer dependency to freedom. Proponents of big government dominate more and more of our institutions — the mainstream media, the schools, the churches, the entertainment industry, and of course the government itself.

The apparatus is there, the capabilities are there, and the argument is merely which way it's directed for the time being.

The difference between America today and the DDR is that we do it with a smile.

When you go to an airport, they X-ray you without probable cause, at the border to the DDR they use to have X-ray machines, I know, I grew up not to far from one in W. Germany. We use shake our heads in disbelief of how ridiculous this was. Today instead of a man in a gray trench coat, an agent in a cheap suit made in China interviews the children in a public school without parental consent or knowledge (your Constitution at work). Today instead of a fat guy with a note pad writing down when people come and go, nearly anything can be tracked through video monitoring of all the roads, toll records, GPS on cars, cell phones, credit cards etc. Instead of tens of thousands that sit and listen, you can filter it electronically, and need less people to do more and much quicker with the ability to transfer and store as well as search the material in many different ways. Today when our government abridges basic Constitutional rights, it of course has much better reason than the DDR, because they didn't use “national security” as their reason unlike us, right? So when every little hick police buys drones and parks them over your house, DHS drives through neighborhoods X-raying cars or entire houses, it's all good: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/08/24/full-body-scan-technology-deployed-in-street-roving-vans/ (Just use the magic words, national security or for the children, then the US Constitution can be circumnavigated - temporarily)

So when we detain people without access to a lawyer, don't tell them what they are accused of, kidnap folks in other countries, interrogate them more vigorously (lol), or we send them off to Egypt or Jordan where someone else interrogates them extra vigorously, it's all cool and we don't torture, right? When we have secret courts, and restrict people from leaving the country even though they have not been sentenced or even been accused of a crime that they are made aware of, we of course have a legitimate reason and it's all OK.

I got it, if we do it, it's OK, anyone else, they're bad.

If you took a microphone and walked the streets of Europe, Japan, or S. Korea today and asked, “who do you see as a greater threat, the US or Russia,” you would be amazed at the answer. Our innocence is gone, and instead of being viewed as the Free and Brave, we are seen as the Brave New World. Don't confuse your ability to consume and make choices between what fast food you want to eat or being able to have sexual relations and marry someone of the same sex with “real” freedom.

1984 was to be a warning, not an instructional manual.

well i dont like bush either
Afte BVush sad islam is a religion of peace i lost all respect for him , he also supports the indepance of kosovo for muslims which is stealing land from a christian nation and giving it to muslims

The fact is Kosovo has been a part of serbia for centuries, and stealing Kosovo from the christian Serbians and giving it to the Muslims is despicable, read http://www.wnd.com/2007/05/41373/ it talks about and proves that indeed the Serbian were the innocent ones and we bombed the wrong people, and yes Milosevic was innocent

Did you know the k.l.a(Kosovo liberation army) which started the war in Serbia is the group al quida spawned from?

The Muslims burned hundred of churches in Serbia some hundreds of year olds,The serbian goverment had to implant martial law to fight them and defend themself, if you want to know more pm me

[Sorry for the length of these responses.]

> If you took a microphone and walked the streets of Europe, Japan, or S. Korea today and asked, “who do you see as a greater threat, the US or Russia,” you would be amazed at the answer.

No, I wouldn’t be. This isn’t something new that happened in response to measures adopted by George W. Bush. Even when the USSR posed a major threat — and the United States was the main force opposing it — the international left (the supposedly “democratic” left) spent far more time criticizing the United States than the USSR. (So did some elements of the fascist right.) You say you grew up in West Germany. Several decades ago I acquired a reading knowledge of German by reading many novels and autobiographies, mostly 20th-century ones, and have been exposed to opinions of the United States in several languages for half a century. I take them with a grain of salt.

An example is Luise Rinser, who denounced the United States while praising the regime of North Korea. North Korea! That just goes to show how prejudiced apparently intelligent foreigners can be when it comes to the United States. (I’ve noticed that political and religious prejudices can “idiotize” even the most intelligent persons.) You could find similar criticisms in almost any foreign writer, especially Nobel Prize winners — long before George W. Bush. And later, of course, that “tyrant” Bush was denounced much more often, and viewed less favorably, than Fidel Castro (though Castro was a dictator for half a century). That attitude also applies to much of the pseudo-intelligentsia of the United States itself.

They have long seen the United States as having a noxious influence on the world. With all its faults, though — and admittedly it has many — I see the United States much differently. I believe the two greatest threats to the world in the last century were Fascism and Communism, and of the countries that opposed them both, the United States was the most powerful. In my opinion the world would be much worse off without it. Now Radical Islam poses a serious threat, and again the United States is the greatest power opposing it.

You ask, “Do you think people are naturally good?” No, I don’t. And knowing that, I realize it’s not niceness that keeps our enemies at bay but strength. True, power tends to be abused, but it takes power to defeat power. I’ve been a non-conformist since my early years (Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” rang true for me), but I realize that as an individual I’m relatively helpless in opposing Fascism, Communism, or Radical Islam. It takes collective power to oppose them.

> I got it, if we do it, it's OK, anyone else, they're bad.

It depends on the circumstances. Our enemies are far worse than we are, and we must do what's necessary to keep worse from prevailing (while striving, I agree, to do the least harm possible). The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

As Thomas Jefferson himself said, "...strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means." [Wikipedia]

As valuable as a good Constitution is, the welfare of the people ultimately depends on their own power to protect their freedom, not on this provision or that in a legal document. Even legally -- by amendment to the Constitution itself -- every guarantee of freedom can be revoked. The people of the United States will be free only to the degree that they demand freedom. Whether they relax those demands in time of war or not, they will be the ones who ultimately decide how free they are (that is, if not forced to submit to a foreign power). Through their votes, civil opposition, and -- under extreme circumstances -- armed insurrection the power is theirs. (That's why I believe concerns about changes in the people themselves are more important than particular laws.)

> “People were risking machine-gun fire to try to escape from the DDR.” [GJones2]
> How many links or sources do you like: [Red6]

Not links from www.salon.com and www.thedailybeast.com, who can hardly be trusted to be unbiased. (I merely glanced at the articles.)

>”An estimated 100 detainees have died during interrogations” [article]

Estimated by which Bush-hating observers (and how would they know)? Even if that unlikely estimate is true, that’s nearly 3,000 fewer than were killed by our enemies on the single day of 9-11. (I haven’t forgotten the image of the people who clung to the windows of the Twin Towers, hoping to survive, until the pain from the flames became so great that they leaped to their deaths.)

> When you go to an airport, they X-ray you without probable cause, at the border to the DDR they use to have X-ray machines... [DDR - Deutsche Demokratische Republik, East Germany]

The mere presence of x-rays doesn’t make those two situations equivalent. People choose to board airplanes, and under current circumstances I wouldn’t choose to do so unless I and others were checked well enough to insure that no one brings anything aboard that could be destroy the plane or, even worse, turn it into a weapon as on 9-11. (Also the DDR and US borders differed greatly. Though the DDR may have been concerned about infiltrating enemy agents, what was most notable about its border was that it was keeping its own people in. The United States doesn’t keep its own people in, and has a hard time keeping illegal immigrants out.)

> The difference between America today and the DDR is that we do it with a smile.
> Don’t confuse your ability to consume and make choices between what fast food you want to eat...with “real” freedom.

You trivialize the differences between the United States and DDR. Clever phrases like “...we do it with a smile” and “...instead of being viewed as the Free and Brave, we are seen as the Brave New World” aren’t enough to blind me to how great those differences are. The United States isn’t a totalitarian society. (I recall how ridiculous it was when people were accusing Bush of being a tyrant, evil incarnate — yet making their denunciations in the open, without hiding their identities. How many persons dare do that in totalitarian societies?)

There’s no guarantee, I agree, that the United States will not turn into a totalitarian society. We do need to remain vigilant. Let’s not get carried away with the comparisons, though. The United States is not the DDR.

In the 70s and 80s you had people flee the East and report of how their Constitution is a joke, human rights are grossly violated, and there is no rule of law. Today, you have not only Snowden in Russia. One guy is trapped in the embassy of Uruguay in London (who reported on violations of international laws and crimes the US government was keeping “secret” for our national security of course- so maybe government documents outlining some of the activities are accurate enough accounts for you?), another in Germany... and they are fleeing the US which they can prove broke its own laws, lied, tortured, etc. What exactly is the unimaginable damage they committed to US national security? They exposed information to the general public which big brother doesn't want you to have, because the intelligence agencies of Russia, China, Israel or even our allies like France and Germany are not surprised by any of these revelations, they all know the games we play. The guns are already pointed inward, and there are already instances of where this poised fruit was used by the DEA and other agencies. There are just those that are blinded through some twisted sense of what patriotism is that makes them think it's all acceptable because it's their flag that is doing it.

Times have changed, and we have become exactly that which we claimed was evil and wrong, and where we spoke of human rights, morals, unalienable rights, the rule of law... It is all a big joke, the US Constitution is a big joke and while you point the finger at society, you yourself are willing to go along and defend these actions because it's your flag. So tell me, where are the principals or values in your argument? Where is your argument that this is Constitutional? Where is your argument that this is moral? Where is the logical consistency? This very email will be read and reviewed (not even a question), by some contractor costing the tax payer >$120,000 a year, reviewed by an agent, filed away forever, and not to be seen by me even if I file a FOIA (classified). That's your freedom and my right to free speech or dissent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3_iLOp6IhM

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