Just a Rant

We have to stop this whole enemy combatant thing. If someone is picked up during a military action somewhere, ok that’s an enemy combatant. The law and order types hate it but we can’t treat people caught here the same. If someone bombs something in america, he should get the same treatment we gave Eric Rudolph. Our law doesn't distinguish between citizens and non-citizens, and it shouldn't. Here on the soil of our land, all people have the same rights, the only difference being if you are a non-citizen, we can send you home.

I have heard, mostly on the right wing radio but also now in the mainstream press, that we may have to give up some of our civil liberties in order to protect us. Face it people, even with the Bin Ladens and Eric Rudophs of the world out there, you're still more likely to die in a car accident than in a terrorist plot. Should we all stop driving? Think of the brave people of London in the second world war. They could have stopped the bombing with a single word. Would they have been better off?

Freedom is not the safest way to live. Freedom is dangerous, sometimes protecting freedom means taking risks. Freedom is costly. It costs blood, not just the blood of the brave men and women in our military, but sometimes it requires our blood. Sometimes we pay for our freedom in our cities, in our airplanes, in our subways, in our busses. We do the best we can to keep our people safe, but we must draw the line somewhere. If we give up our liberty in pursuit of security, we deserve only tyranny.

We can’t be locking people up without due process, or we are not free, we are the victims of tyranny, neither safe nor free. The sad fact is no amount of arrests will make us completely safe. We should do what we can to protect ourselves within the law, because it is the law, and our respect for the law that keeps us free.

If that means some of us will die that would have lived under tyranny, I for one choose freedom, danger and all.