Living in the Age of Fear:

Read this while you still can.

This is a follow-up to my earlier blog about an impending storm. I hoped things would change and I would have no cause to post this. Do you remember my intimation of something amiss? When a storm is approaching I get a tightness in my gut that tells me to beware. Well the clouds over our nation keep getting darker.

"There's something happening here What it is ain't exactly clear There's a man with a gun over there Telling me I got to beware I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound Everybody look what's going down
Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you're always afraid. You step out of line, the man come and take you away"

These Lyrics, from the song "For What Its Worth" by Buffalo Springfield echoed public concerns of a heightening police state in the 1960s. The rising state of paranoia, on both sides of the "street," was in response to civil unrest over the ongoing, and very unpopular, Vietnam War. The military draft and government corruption fanned the fires of discontent. Hard lines were being drawn and radical groups like the SDS (Students for Democratic Society), Weathermen, FSM (Free Speech Movement) and Black Panthers rose in violent opposition to increasing government intrusion into, and control over, our lives. Are there any parallels here? Does any of this sound familiar? There is a subtle difference. Instead of trying to tear the government down from the outside, many of these same people are working inside the government today. They have never given up their crusade and they still want to destroy our government and our way of life.

On a positive note, today our fear has a color chart. What terror threat level are we at today: Yellow, Orange, or Red? As you know, in 2001 a handful of terrorists provided our leaders with the opportunity to create/enlarge the shadow government accountable only to the inner circle of the White House. Wait what’s that sound? This is America! What are we afraid of? We have ICE, DHS, DEA, DEC, FBI, CIA, NSA, NSC, INS, TSA and the list goes on, all dedicated to protecting us. Protecting us from whom or what? Try Googling "government agencies" and see what you find. My short list does not include your local Police, State Police, Air Marshals, Federal Marshals, Sheriffs, Texas Rangers, Park Police, and dozens of other agencies I have overlooked. Yet we are afraid, and we worry that if "You step out of line, the man come and take you away."

The lines of freedom are becoming narrower day by day. When legislators pass bills into law and never wrote or read them, stepping out of line might happen innocently. No one can possibly know all of the laws, regulations, and ordinances that now rule over the very minutiae of our lives. When we go through airports, cross borders, enter government buildings, drive through police road check points, we have no idea what laws we may be breaking or who is watching us, and innocent or not, fear begins to rise up in us like bile. How can this be happening in the Home of the Free and the Land of the Brave? Didn’t we win the cold war against dictators and repression? Or did tearing down the Berlin Wall simply allow the contagion of fear and repression to spread around the world?

Are our phones tapped? Is this blog being monitored for anti-American sentiment? Am I on someone’s hit list as an extremist radical? Why should I have cause to ask these questions? Maybe because now there is a public hot line so you can email the White House to report malcontents and misfits like me. It is shameful that promises of free speech, transparency, accountability in government, and bi-partisanship in congress have, within a brief six months, been ground under the heels of Chicago style thugs. But here we are, living in the shadow of fear. Bills like the Bush's Patriot Act were designed to protect us from a handful of Islamic extremists. Now we find ourselves monitored, ruled, and regulated by the Orc-like Czars, advisors, and the minions of the president and the goons of The Department of Homeland Security, who abuse this power to intimidate us.

Storm Clouds are building and there is an electric charge in the air. People are listening, standing in the streets. "What’s that sound?" I pray it is the sound of the American soul awakening. I think we are only beginning to have some small idea of how the Jewish people felt living under the brooding skies of Nazi Germany. "I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound Everybody look what's going down………". My gut tells me there is definitely a storm coming down.