Gene Healy has another good column up giving some pretty good reasons to be paranoid about government abuses -- namely things like the Guatemalan syphilis experiment -- but this conclusion is kind of silly:
Listen, I'm a patriotic, nonparanoid American. I don't lose much sleep worrying that today's feds are irradiating people and giving them diseases in the name of public health and national security.
That's not because I think human nature has recently been transformed. It's because, as the Cold War waned, Americans recognized that sunlight's a powerful disinfectant, and we passed laws reining in executive secrecy.
In the wake of 9/11, though, the last two administrations have fought hard to reverse that progress. Just before the Clinton/Sebelius apology, President Obama's legal team invoked the "state secrets" privilege to shield scrutiny of its plan to assassinate an American citizen abroad.
"I love my country, but I fear my government," a popular Tea Party sign proclaims. That's the right attitude for a patriot -- now, and in the years to come.
Healy is a very thoughtful and consistent critic of presidential power, but the Tea Partiers couldn't care less about the targeted-killing program, so I'm not sure why they're being invoked here. These people are angry about the health-care insurance mandate, not the administration asserting the authority to kill American citizens suspected of terrorism. In their view, abuses of power apply to expansions of the welfare state enacted by duly elected representatives, not secretive measures taken by the executive branch in the name of national security. This all makes perfect sense if one sees the Tea Partiers as the usual conservative reactionaries as opposed to a bunch of civic-minded, well-meaning libertarians. I'm somewhat sympathetic to Healy's concluding sentiment, less so to the source and their interpretation.
