AKMA’s Random Thoughts

This Is Important

I am no starry-eyed booster of Americanism; still, few experiments in civil organization have taken such bold and persistent steps toward respecting citizens as the raison d’être of the state, and I can’t help admiring the spirit that stirs advocates for civil liberty. That’s why I still care about stories like this one about Dan Hughes’s brother and his brother’s fiancée. These accounts peel back the veneer of patriotism from the red-white-and-blue-boys in Washington. Empty talk about protecting the U.S. from the Hydra of terrorism comes cheap, but the constitutional liberties for which Bush and his cronies presumably stand were bought dearly, imagined broadly and deeply, and are being squandered as sacrifices to the idol of Security.

No state founded upon ideals of liberty can ensure its security by compromising its ideals.

No policies aimed at protecting citizens’ security can attain that goal by imposing a politics of fear and suspicion.

Mssrs. Bush and Cheney, at long last sirs, have you no shame?