An Abrupt Change

You kids might not remember the 9/11 attacks, but I am certainly old enough to recall that horrific day.

I’m also old enough to remember when America had presidents who could speak in full, coherent sentences. But that’s another story.

One aspect of the attack’s aftermath that many people do not remember, or choose to forget, is the Patriot Act. This rabbit punch to our civil liberties was rammed through by Republicans and timid Democrats, all of whom insisted that unless we wanted religious zealots to blow us up repeatedly, we had to agree to be surveilled nonstop. We are still living with the legacy of this panicky response to terrorism.

I also recall more than one conservative in 2001 insisting that we had to racially profile airplane passengers and that we had to be willing to give up some of our freedoms to feel safe.

Well, a quarter-century later, a new breed of conservatives are bravely standing up, renouncing the past, and insisting that… we have to be willing to give up some of our freedoms to feel safe (or at least, not get offended).

You see, “some Republicans who consider themselves defenders of unfettered speech are getting more comfortable with limiting it.” At least one Republican congressman has said, “under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right” before adding “I don’t feel that way anymore.”

I must admit, I had no idea the First Amendment could be discarded so quickly simply because Republicans aren’t feeling it.

Also, these “normal times” that the GOP is referring to are apparently the Biden years, which pretty much admits that the Trump years are fucked up to the point that authoritarianism becomes the default.

The larger issue, a point that has been made multiple times over multiple decades, is that if anything bad happens, the GOP will melt down and shout, “And now we have to take away all your rights.”

Hell, sometimes nothing bad needs to happen for conservatives to, say, “Stop it with your civil liberties nonsense.” It takes very little for conservatives to jettison the values they claim to uphold. 

That might be because they never believed any of that stuff in the first place.