Opinion : Why the USA PATRIOT Act needs a new name

When you walk into the nearest Social Security office, the first person you see is a man with a gun. The first words you hear are "Why are you here?"

At first, you think: "Seriously? Who's going to rob (or otherwise harm) the Social Security Administration?" Then you remember that it's a federal building, all of which are under orders for special security.

It all started, of course, on 9/11.

They literally "circled the wagons," on Sept. 12, 2001, at the Iowa National Guard armory in the city of Washington, 90 miles south of Vinton. There were not enough concrete barriers that day, so the staff arranged a wall of trailers around the facility to prevent someone from driving into it with a vehicle bomb.

The government did, however, have plenty of those concrete barriers to put around the temporary federal courthouse on the southwest corner of Cedar Rapids. I assume -- or at least hope -- that whatever security perimeter they use for their fancy new building will be more aesthetically pleasing when it opens next year.

You can't take your gun with you into the federal court building. Your phone, either. (Or your laptop, which makes taking notes at the federal court building more difficult.) There, they also ask you who you are and why you are there. But instead of the uniformed officer you see at the SSA, you are met by men in dark sport coats, wearing the plastic earpieces you associate with Secret Service agents. You also have to remove your shoes before walking through the metal detector, and present a photo ID. That seems more logical at a court building, where a variety of pretty nasty criminals get sent to jail in the federal system, where there is no parole.

Since you have to leave your phone in your vehicle, you may want to make sure you have the key to your car (and not the key to the back door of your house) in your pocket when you lock it. Otherwise you could face a very long delay. Or, if you are very lucky, you will get a very enlightening demonstration of how federal agents unlock vehicle doors when they conduct search warrants. There is a surprisingly fast and effective system for opening doors of locked vehicles that does not need any kind of electrical power. Don't ask me how I know.

The most recent ridiculous example of security inspections that I observed occurred during the Honor Flight on April 26, where 90-year-old World War II veterans in wheelchairs had to go through the same TSA inspection process as everyone else. Again you see this and think, "Seriously?"

But in an age when nutjobs, screwballs, morons and variety of other malcontents try to blow up their shoes or their shorts on airplanes, you can't blame the government for being more paranoid than usual.

But we can blame the government for being as shallow and self-serving. as ever.

That is exactly what Congress and the Bush administration did when it named the USA PATRIOT Act.

Generally speaking, I am in favor of virtually all of the things that the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 allows the government to do.

However, I have hated the bill's name from the start.

Why?

First of all, it's historically inaccurate. A "patriot" was not someone who opposed terrorism. A "patriot" was someone who believed that the 13 colonies should be independent of rule by Great Britain and King George III. And the naming of Sept. 11 as Patriot Day was also a silly mistake. We already have a Patriot Day -- April 19. On that day, the first shots were fired in what became the Revolutionary War. (They still celebrate each April 19 in areas of Concord and Lexington, Mass.)

Second, it implies that anyone who does not support the bill is unpatriotic.

One of the best impacts that 9/11 had on us as a society is that it made patriotism fashionable. It gave us a greater appreciation of the unique freedom that America offered its citizens and inspired much of the world to seek.

But like everything else that is good, patriotism also inspires commercial bandwagonism (one example: Rapper P. Diddy wearing a military uniform and trying to salute) and a strive for political one-upmanship.

One-upmanship is exactly what happened in the fall of 2001. After pondering a few versions of a new law to help fight terrorism, the Bush administration sent to Congress a bill it had named the "PATRIOT" act. Congress looked at the bill and said: No, we want to call it the "USA PATRIOT" Act. Fortunately, they stopped before the next version, the "GOD BLESS AMERICA, LAND THAT I LOVE Act," but only because members of Congress are incapable of learning that many words in an acronym. (I wonder how many members of Congress could, today, tell you that the USA PATRIOT Act stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, without saying "ah, ummm, it means something like...")

Vinton Today received an email yesterday from the office of Sen. Charles Grassley, repeating a letter he wrote to President Obama, calling on him to renew portions of the PATRIOT Act.

Sen. Grassley did not call for a renaming of the law, although he, and every other member of Congress should do so.

Americans are smart enough to know that the name of a law has nothing to do with what it actually does. The USA PATRIOT Act by any other name would be just as sour for terrorists -- and a lot more credible among those of us who want the government to use its provisions to stop them.