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This chapter examines the seemingly unique post-9/11 political landscape, which also showcases the cycle of ambivalence in a very different and more condensed context. In the early months and years after the attacks, especially seen in the USA Patriot Act and the Iraq War resolution, Congress delegated extraordinary powers not only through the bills' text but also through the unorthodox speed and limited deliberations preceding their passage. Congressional rhetoric in the year after 9/11 echoed the Bush administration's argument that only it saw the nation's interest, while members who advocated the House and the Senate's traditional prerogative to review the administration's requests were branded as obstructionists or worse. Congress had its chances to question the nation's intelligence problems related to 9/11, the Iraq war, and the administration's management of the War on Terror in general during congressional reviews and confirmation hearings, but these did not result in extraordinary changes in policy or major cuts in Bush's spending requests.

This chapter presents four case studies that broadly conform to the core theoretical claims in this book: the nationalizing effects of World War I, national labor policy after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt’s domestic policy influence during World War II, and the immigration provisions of the U.S.A. Patriot Act. In each case, we see how wars heighten national considerations and thereby augment the president’s influence within Congress.

This chapter begins by tracing the origins of the anti-kleptocracy cause in the United States, starting with the harsh Cold War environment and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977. It explores the status quo ante of dictators being able to launder their funds in the US financial system with impunity immediately before and after the turn of the century. At this time, there was no law prohibiting American banks and other institutions receiving the proceeds of foreign corruption. The USA Patriot Act closed this legal loophole, yet practice lagged, and laws at first failed to have much of an impact. More recent cases indicate at least partial effectiveness, however, with instances of successful prevention and some looted wealth confiscated and returned.

The United States and the United Kingdom have rich histories of panic and overreaching responses to events that appear to threaten national security. Both countries have a habit of giving the executive non-reviewable extrajudicial discretion to address perceived emergencies. Historical US examples are the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), the Palmer Raids (1919-1920), Japanese-American World War II internments, and the Alien Registration Act of 1940(Smith Act). The UK revived executive detentions in 1915 with Regulation 14b of the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, Regulation18B of the Emergency Powers Act 1939, and the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1974. Post 9/11, the US implemented the USA PATRIOT Act and the UK implemented the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001. Typically these responses involve preventive detention, focus on aliens, guilt by association, and use of administrative rather than criminal procedures. This chapter discusses the emergency legislation and historical court decisions including Korematzu v United States and Liversidge v Anderson.

Individual reasoning about the common good, or even about one’s own good, is typically much less reliable than deferring to others on complex questions. Indeed in many if not most public contexts, individual reasoning would immobilize us. So we don’t do it. This fact embarrasses the liberal view that we ought to make our own judgments about matters of politics and conscience. The opposite is true: if we are to have any coherent politics at all, let alone meaningfully join together with others, we must practice deference to others’ judgment. The current chapter thus rejects the “principle of autonomy” and defends in its place a deference principle that guides us to defer to others about what is all things considered the best thing to do in a given circumstance. It is shown, however, that such deference is nonetheless compatible with liberalism.