Roger Long wrote:
"Marco Leon" mmleon(at)yahoo.com wrote in message
...


Is this all "window dressing?" Sure it is. But it's a relatively small
price
to pay to enjoy the freedom we have.


It's is NOT, NOT, NOT, a relatively small price. You've got it all EXACTLY
backwards.

The terrorists could never take our freedom. Only we (or our government if
completely ceases to become "we") can do that. The terrorists are not
powerful enough. They can knock down buildings, shut down city transit
systems, kill millions, and we will still be free if the country has the
guts to keep ourselves free.

You are not talking about freedom but only the illusion of infinitesimally
greater safety from violent acts that, while they have a huge impact on the
national psyche, are almost vanishingly unlikely to happen to any
individual. This illusion is created not by actually making us feel safer
but by creating a pervasive atmosphere of fear such that having freedoms
taken away brings us back to where we were before. When something is taken
away and then given back, you haven't gained anything.

The price for this illusion is innumerable changes in small things that used
to enrich our lives like parents stopping along the airport runway to watch
the planes with their children. Each may be inconsequential but in sum they
make up the essence of the freedom that this nation has always cherished.

The tragedy is that these changes have nothing, absolutely NOTHING, to do
with increasing our safety and everything to do with an illusion that is
being increasingly manipulated by the government for purposes of achieving
the power to change the society in ways that would be considered radical if
the party currently in power were not labeled conservative.

Hitler, Sadam, and his ilk got their first grip on power by getting people
to say, "Sure, the storm troopers are obnoxious but they make the trains run
on time and I've got a job now."

The increasing and widespread adoption of exactly the point of view
expressed in your post is a far, far greater threat to our nation than the
terrorists will ever be.

No one can take freedom from a country as great as this one but we are free
to give it up.


Well said, Roger! Freedom is under attack, and not (mainly) by the
terrorists.

-Aviv