Seven years after

I was looking over bumper stickers the other day, since Daniel is interested in getting one for his new car, and I was surprised at how antagonistic so many of them are.

One of them said something along the lines of 'Why do liberals hate the government more than they hate the terrorists.' While I think that's an incredible oversimplification, I think it's a good day to address the question.

Maybe it's that so little has occurred terror-wise in the past seven years, but the kindergarten color-coded terror-levels, the atrocities of Guantanamo Bay, the limitation on liquids when flying, the Patriot Act's erosion of civil liberties, the atmosphere that makes you unpatriotic to question our government's decisions, the unilateral war that costs us billions of dollars but nothing in the way of the war support that went on during the two World Wars nor anything else in the past seven years that has encouraged us coming together as Americans with those rights we do agree to (unless it is to consume more to keep the economy going): all these things have done more to harm our great country than the attacks of 9-11.

And that is not to denigrate the loss our country did suffer, not only of precious human life but of a sense of security on our own shores. But allowing that one attack on that one day to shape us to where we have lost sight of and faith in the ideals that have been most precious to our country and our way of life is not the solution and, in fact, it makes me feel that the terrorists have won. But only because we, especially our government which is only too happy to keep us scared enough that we don't question its unAmerican actions, have let them win. We have changed how we live, how we think, what our priorities are because we fear the terrorists, and that is unacceptable. And the actions of our government in terms of the havoc it has wrecked upon the ideals America had held for so long is itself terrorism.

When the government has acted like terrorists in terms of terrorizing its citizens, why should I hate them any less than any other anti-American terrorists?