The Safety

Why are we cowards? Why do we not bat an eye at the implication that the president's most sacred duty is to ensure that no American ever dies or is ever afraid? If we were that soft, that desperate for affection and protection, what was the point of the Revolution? Let's get a grip, patriots. Freedom isn't free, but the cost is not a willingness to give up freedom; it's a willingness to defend it to the death.

Free people and brave people aren't supposed to obsess about theoretical dangers. And if this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, how is it that Habeus Corpus is debatable? How is it that the medieval act of 9/11 will plunge us into that same moral universe, where torture is a subject for polite debate on mainstream cable channels?

Freedom isn't free; that much is true, but that truism needs to be reclaimed from the proto-fascist element. We had one bad attack, which took about 12% of the American lives that were taken in that same year by other Americans, and already we torture and disappear people.

If we are willing to cede our "God given" liberties, to suspend our "unalienable rights, endowed by our Creator", after one act of violence, do we really expect to draw the line after the next attack? We've displayed our willingness to renounce what we claim to hold dear at the first sign of danger; why would we be surprised if our enemy or our government exploited that tendency?


There is a cost to freedom, and it doesn't involve sending soldiers to subjugate cesspools that no body's ever heard of; it involves a mature and sober acknowledgement that open societies are subjected to infiltration and occasional acts of espionage and terrorism. Simple as that. If you think terrorism is intolerable, move to North Korea. There's no terrorism there. If you think that's too much to give, grow the fuck up.