Throughout the media coverage of the NSA scandal has been the refrain about the need to balance liberty and security. It is a comforting line, even if I doubt it is true. We are led to believe that government officials are writing rules and establishing procedures so that we use just enough surveillance to catch the bad guys without infringing on the liberty of the good guys.

The question I frequently ask on my radio program is: Can anyone give me an example of when the government refrained from doing surveillance? If we are to believe that government bureaucrats are trying to find a balance, surely there was some time when someone said: “No, we can’t do that.” If not, we really don’t have a balance between liberty and security. We have government doing whatever it can, whenever it can without any thought about the impact on our liberty or privacy.

Another way to look at this is to compare rhetoric to reality. Senator Barack Obama and presidential candidate Barack Obama was very critical of the Patriot Act. One would think it was worse than the Espionage Act. President Barack Obama, however, has now used features of the Patriot Act to spy on Americans in ways that exceed what was done when President George W. Bush was in office. President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have even used the Espionage Act to label a Fox News journalist as a possible co-conspirator in espionage.

Perhaps you are seeing a trend. When President Bush was in office, his supporters weren’t too worried about overreach because he and Attorney General John Ashcroft were in charge. Those who weren’t in power (such as Senator Barack Obama) were harshly critical of what the Republican administration was doing to fight the war on terror.

Is the government too concerned about balancing liberty and security? I don’t think so. Moreover, it seems like those who are concerned about government overreach are the ones out of power. Once they are in power, they are convinced everything’s just fine. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.