Lynne Kiesling
Does President Obama realize his hypocrisy when he says (as he did in his weekend radio address) that “as Americans, we refuse to live in fear”, while simultaneously having large armed law enforcement teams storm airplanes that have landed, remove passengers, strip search them, and detain them without probable cause or a warrant? Soshana Hebshi gives her own account on her blog; Mike Riggs reports on it at Reason, and James Fallows reports on it at The Atlantic. Note in Hebshi’s account that there were about 50 such events on Sunday, so if you think this is an isolated event you are sadly mistaken, or dare I say with all respect, naively deluded and in denial.
This authoritarian drive for power and control is a consequence of our fear-based “anything for security” policies. Such fear-based cowardice is socially, culturally, morally, and economically corrosive.
It.must.stop.now. And it will only stop if we, individually, choose consciously to object to authoritarian policies grounded in fear-based cowardice, make our objections loud and unavoidable to our peers and our elected so-called representatives, and refuse to be terrorized by our own government.
As long as this state of affairs persists, these issues are far, far more important and life-threatening (and way-of-life threatening) than electricity regulation, regulatory and competition policy, and technological change. That’s why I am writing about Shoshana Hebshi today rather than those topics. It.must.stop.now.