Fair Warning

Mustang Bobby gets to the job of commenting on Leonard Pitts' column in the Miami Herald before I do and does his usual excellent job.

The column begins;

The enemies of freedom will be defeated.

-- President George W. Bush, 2005

We have met the enemy and he is us.

-- Pogo, 1971

The following happened in the United States of America on Feb. 9 of this year.

The scene is the Little Falls branch of the Montgomery County Public Library in Bethesda, Md. Business is going on as usual when two men in uniform stride into the main reading room and call for attention. Then they make an announcement: It is forbidden to use the library's computers to view Internet pornography.

As people are absorbing this, one of the men challenges a patron about a website he is visiting and asks the man to step outside. At this point, a librarian intervenes and calls the uniformed men aside. A police officer is summoned. The men leave. It turns out they are employees of the county's department of Homeland Security and were operating way outside their authority.

Walt Kelly first used that phrase "We have met the enemy and he is us." on Earth Day in 1970 and I have always thought it one of the most profound sentences ever uttered. Leonard Pitts does the usual excellent job of distilling the salient facts and making sure the reader does not miss the root of the issue however I am not so sure Leonard is strong enough in his implications.

In spite of what you may wish to believe, this country is on the fastrack to becoming a fascist state. We are losing freedoms at an ever increasing pace and the trend is accelerating. Out leaders only give lip service to our needs and only respond with any true action when the corporate fat cats speak. A little research upon fascism will show you that this is the definition of fascism.

While the terrorist may kill a few or a lot of us the most dangerous people are those that take our hard won liberties for granted and place their unswerving trust in their elected leaders to do the right thing. They can kill us all.