It's started.
Some TV talking head the weekend after the Attack was blathering on about how to achieve even a minimal sense of security- guns have to be taken off the streets.
OK, the Desk must have missed something there. Which of the four aircraft highjacked on that fateful day were taken over with a firearm of any sort?
A radio show went on at length about how we must have a National ID card with our fingerprint and whatever other information the Authorities may think needed on it.
Excuse me. How would having or not having an ID card have prevented the highjacking? Especially if the terrorists were Foreign Nationals with valid passports and visas?
There is more hot air circulating about having video cameras scan the faces in the crowd at shopping malls and on street corners.
Wait a minute. Which of the terrorists had a criminal record so the cops would have had a picture of them on file. And even if they did. If there were no outstanding warrants on them, when did it become against the law to wait on a bus?
Others are waxing poetic about profiling members of certain organizations and those that have expressed dislike of various policies and programs.
OK, fine. When we finish with the Radical Muslims, the Communists, the Socialists, the White Supremacists, the Fanatical Conservationists, the Waco-brand Religious Nuts... then the NRA, PTA, UMW, the NAACP, the NOW... and the Right to Lifers, and the Screen Actors Guild, and the Boy Scouts... We'll have something on the order of two hundred and seventy million profiles. Then what?
Bad times make for bad laws.
OK, maybe the National Office of Whatever Bush Nominated Governor Ridge For is a good idea, right now. To access our vulnerabilities, to look at what we can do. To look at what we SHOULD do.
But the Desk has a grim suspicion that that office will never go away. Like the Drug Czar position. And from this crisis will spring a whole slew of laws that look good now, will, in the long run, be absolutely awful in their application.
And what is Still America will take another step down the mountain of Liberty. From what is leaning toward being a Nanny-State...
'Beware of hot coffee, wear your seat belt, don't drink and hang glide near power lines...'
to an actual Police State.
Where you have to have 'your papers' with you at all times or you are subject to arrest.
Where you have to sign out of your local precinct and into the other one if you are going to Kentucky to visit your Aunt Myrtle.
Where you are restricted from getting that fine old publication 'The Whale Watchers Journal' because it is published in Iceland and we KNOW what political ideologues they are.
Where only Certain Ones are allowed to own even defensive weapons.
Where foreign nationals are watched even more than they are now just in case they may try to influence an American to come over to their way of thinking.
No the Desk is NOT KIDDING.
In Afghanistan under the Taliban:
You must have your papers, or you can be... not just arrested... KILLED.
Movement is limited between various parts of the country.
Outside media is blocked or jammed.
Only the Talib is armed, and heavily armed at that.
A Westerner can be arrested and an Afghani killed if they are seen talking without a Talib present.
Do WE want America to turn into that?
Are WE going to tolerate an even further erosion of freedom and liberty under the guise of trying to protect us from a threat that isn't even a 'Clear and Present Danger'?
Yes, there are terrorists 'OUT THERE'.
For that matter, yes, there are bad guys out there.
There are criminals out there.
Extremists. Nutcases. Conspirators.
They have been out there, they are out there now, they will be out there for all time.
Get used to the idea.
back to the desk