Pre-9/11 Mentality

I had another blog once, on Myspace. It had a couple of good entries I'd like to preserve for posterity and share with you, my loyal reading masses (oops, no readers yet). Here's one of my faves from back during the '08 presedential campaign. Enjoy:


Yesterday someone accused me of having a "Pre-9/11 Mentality".

This label has been tossed around so much lately as an insult directed by hard-line conservatives at, well, everyone else (oh, except now Obama is using it on McCain, too) that my gut instinct was to get defensive. But then I thought about it.

What is a "Pre-9/11 Mentality" anyway? I did a search and came up with a few things. Here's my decidedly non-hardline-conservative perspective on the things they think are insults: If you believe that the world is no more or less dangerous today than it was on 9/10; if you don't actively fear terrorism; if you don't believe that freedom should be traded for security; if you're skeptical at best about the unilateral application of "preemptive strikes", "ghost detainees", and "regime change"; if you still believe that the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of religion, and the freedom to peaceably assemble should not be abridged; if you believe that torturing prisoners is un-American; if you believe that our place should be to lift up and not tear down…

Then you probably have a pre-9/11 mentality.

You know, on September 10th I lived in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I believed it. No, more than that. I knew it. When I was younger I always thought how lucky an enemy soldier must be to be captured by us. I could not even conceive of a prisoner being abused at our hands the way I saw ours being abused in war movies. Shortly after September 11th, when it became clear that the terrorists had won; had forced a fundamental change in the way we live our lives, I realized that I didn't live in that place anymore. The freedoms our fathers and mothers had fought and died for were being tossed aside or whittled away in the name of safety. The United States was no longer the land of the free; or should I say it was the land of the not AS free as before. And if we had still been the home of the brave, we never would have allowed such a tragedy to occur. And when I say "tragedy" I'm not talking about the tragic events of 9/11, but the tragic rape of the constitution and bill of rights that came in their wake.

The price of freedom isn't just blood and bullets. It's also vulnerability. When we are free to go and do as we will, we are vulnerable to attack at any moment. But it is the love of that freedom which should make us go defiant and unafraid even in the face of evil. September 11th was part of the price of that freedom. And instead of remaining resolute and refusing to be terrorized we have turned in our neighbors to the secret service for unpatriotic bumper stickers, tapped each other's phones and email without warrants, redacted supreme court briefs warning against frivolous use of redaction, and ultimately dishonored those who paid for our freedoms every day since September 11th, 2001.

So the next time I'm accused of having a Pre-9/11 Mentality I think I may just thank the smug cocksuckser spewing what he thinks is the 21st century version of "pinko".

Or I just may knock him on his ass and say

You're goddamn right I do, bitch. And you just got knocked the-fuck out by a yogurt-eating hippie.

Peace, homies. It's not just for the dead anymore,