I had a thought when I heard an NPR report about a professor whose speech at a university was cancelled due to death threats and the like. This professor promoted the idea that people in the World Trade Center operated the machinery which resulted in the deaths of many Arabs, and thus were not innocent victims on September 11, 2001. He called them "little Eichmanns" (not sure of the spelling) referring to a Nazi war criminal who made the Holocaust possible.
NPR Morning Edition
Although I don't really agree with his thoughts, I have to believe that the al-Qaeda are winning when we threaten death to someone whose views, while reprehensible to ours, do not result in or advocate harm to others.
However the bigger problem is this: nobody who would read my blog or listen to NPR News seems at all likely to be the sort of person who would threaten to kill someone else for the viewpoints. So all of the people that I know can pat ourselves on the back for not being that sort of person, but we haven't really dealt with the fact that there are Americans that would make those kinds of threats. It's like there are two Americas woven together. So there don't have to be any more terrorist attacks from outside the U.S., because there are evidently plenty of Americans who will happily terrorize other Americans who don't agree with them.
You want to lead the U.S. to greatness, Mr. George Bush? Lead us out of this self-destructive trap.
: 3:40 PM
