“Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purpose is beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” --Louis Dembitz Brandeis, lawyer, judge, and writer (1856-1941)
I always get inspired to write when I read BurningBird's blog and the attached comments. What I read there seems to send me off into all sorts of what ifs, and down paths of introspection. I see different facets of what is lurking about in my own mind.
Shelley has been back from a recent hiatus for awhile, but I missed her return, so I'm playing catch up. On 11/24, she wrote an interesting piece on changing someone else's opinion. I recommend that you read it, but that's not what I want to talk about.
In this piece, she mentioned an interview Tommy Franks did with Cigar Aficionado magazine - you can find it here. General Franks tells the interviewer that “if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.” He proceeds to warn us that such an incident would cause us to “question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution.”
This scenario seems very real to me in our current state of fear here in the US of A, and the potential of living in a totalitarian state scares me down to the very marrow of my bones. It scares me far more than any terrorist threat.
The problem is that it doesn't scare enough of my fellow Americans, too many of whom live in a constant state of denial. "It can't happen here" syndrome sucks most of us in and keeps ups safe - so we think. We are about as safe as the ostrich with his head in the sand. Problem is that he doesn't realize that his posterior is very much exposed.
As the tragedy of September 11, proved it can happen here - and it can happen to you, or me, or someone close to us.
We feel safe within the bubble of our 200+ years of freedom and democracy, and we don't realize how fragile that safety is. We don't realize that this bubble can so easily be broken. The Patriot Act and other policies and trends set in place since 9/11 have paved the way for the possibilities. I strongly believe that another terrorist attack on our soil will provide justification to those who crave total power (and I'm convinced they are all too prevalent among our current administration) to stage a coup.
Friends, acquaintances and family members brush off my fears. They think I'm an alarmist with an overactive imagination. I seem to be in the minority, so maybe I am, but I don't think so.
I think you have only to study history, and do some research to at least raise some questions in your mind. The trouble is that most of us don't do that. We're focused on our own lives and events closer to home. We don't have time to concern ourselves with the bigger picture. But if we don't consider the big picture, it may be here before we even know what has happened - and then it may be too late to stop it.
I think we have to at least consider the possibility. Maybe it won't happen, but I still think that to prevent it from happening, you have to first allow that it could. If we don't at least do that, the reality could sneak up from behind us and catch us with our heads in the sand.
On a visit to the Bronx Zoo, I was amused by signs in the reptile house. As a rather large python slept in a tree behind thick glass keeping us from him, and him from us. The sign alongside this glass enclosure read, “Don't bang on the glass ... what would you do if it broke.”
Take a long look at your freedoms folks ... what would you do if you woke up one morning and they were gone.
Posted by Cyberkat at November 29, 2003 10:50 AM | TrackBack