Last week in Washington DC, something happened, quietly and mostly ignored. Most news media trained their attention on negotiations over the "fiscal cliff," the deal that would address the US's budget deficit.

On another matter, however, the media was mostly silent. After only minimal debate, the US Congress decided to renew the FISA law without any modification for another five years.

FISA, standing for "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," was created in 1978 in reaction to the Nixon administration's abuses of government power. It was designed to limit government spying within US borders.

The original law created guidelines and judicial oversight for physical and electronic surveillance, in particular requiring a warrant for ongoing surveillance. FISA also designated criminal penalties for breaches of these requirements.

In the 2000s, the Bush administration overstepped the boundaries set up by this law, for example engaging in warrantless wiretapping of an unidentified number of Americans with the collusion of telecommunications companies. In 2007 and 2008, congress changed FISA to retroactively make much of this activity legal.

When President Barack Obama campaigned for his first term in office, he first opposed these changes but then voted for them in congress. During his first term in office, however, no changes were forthcoming.

When the law came up for renewal last week, Obama finally completed his full turnaround, asking congress to approve another five years of the expanded version of FISA with no changes.

A few congressmen proposed adjustments to the law, the kinds of limitations that might make government surveillance more accountable to the public, but these were easily overrun.

In fact, many Democrats who had vociferously opposed the unrestricted surveillance of the Bush presidency now support the president's desire to leave the law without meaningful transparency or oversight.

In other words, these politicians care more about the power of their party than the democratic principles they formerly cited, a point made forcefully by Glenn Greenwald in his December 28 Guardian article, which details Obama's history with the FISA law.

The major problem with all this is that it bypasses fundamental principles of democracy, which is not simply a system of popular rule. For democracy to subsist it requires both the protection of minority groups and the public transparency of the law.

Only with these safeguards can democracy become what it was intended to be: a system that can incorporate dissent without risking social collapse. Without them, it easily becomes degraded, even dangerous.

It turns out that the current version of FISA contradicts both of these important principles. Most Americans ignore the changes to FISA because they assume that their leadership will restrict itself to punishing other types of people, in this instance, Muslims.

In times of war - now a constant condition for the US - this kind of self-absorption is bolstered by government and media assurances that such power is necessary to protect the US from unknown enemies. This combination of selfishness, xenophobia, and anxiety makes Obama's extension of war powers an easy bargain in a supposedly divisive political environment. 

For a look at how citizens in a democracy are supposed to react when their elected leaders seize too much power, we might turn to recent events in Egypt.

Last November, Egypt's first democratically elected leader, President Mohamad Morsi, announced that his country's judiciary would no longer be able to limit his decrees. Much like US politicians, who often argue that they need to expand policing and secrecy to protect US freedoms, Morsi claimed national interest: He said he wanted to protect the gains of their recent revolution. 

The reaction in Cairo, however, was very different from anything seen in the US. Common citizens rallied in the streets. Unlike US Democrats falling in line behind their president like helpless sheep, even members of Morsi's own administration criticized his unjustified assumption of power.

Granted, the analogy is not perfect: Egyptians are confronting a nationwide vote on the basic design for their new government's constitution, something that the US has never had to experience.

Nevertheless, the contrast is still deeply ironic: The US, often depicted as the source and refuge of democracy, doesn't seem to care very much about it, while Egypt, often portrayed in the media as a dangerously unstable place liable to fall into religious dictatorship, is, by one measure at least, doing a better job.

Conflict over their new constitution continues, some of it fairly violent, and it remains unclear whether the Egyptians will finally be able to incorporate dissenting and minority groups into their new government. But for the present, their struggle for democracy is awake, which is more than can be said for other quarters. 

The author is a PhD candidate in Ohio State University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn