T.I.P.S. Tabled

1984 has been postponed, at least for a while. Just between you and me, it's not coming back. There is a backlash coming against giving up freedom, at least until the government shows that it can accomplish something beyond searching grandmothers while allowing Egyptian males unmolested access to aircraft.

Anything that Dick Armey and Nat Hentoff can agree upon meets the very definition of wide appeal across the political spectrum, but what happened to the middle? The moderates, centrists, and mainstream writers all seemed to give a big fat yawn to the idea of establishing a Stasi-like arrangement of spies within the land of the free and the home of the brave has disconcerted (scroll down to last entry) me since I heard about it. Even though moderates are, in my opinion, people without serious political convictions, they do make up the majority of voters. That's why our last presidential race ended in a statistical tie, with the margin of victory within the rounding error.

The founders of this great nation were gravely worried that the vast middle would trade away its freedoms for a little more safety, but usually our extremists, plus our spirited national debate, have (so far) preserved our Union, at least insofar as the fact that this is STILL the greatest nation on the planet, as well as the best place to live and bring up a family. Most citizens have their hearts in the right place. The greatest threat to our way of life is the political class. ironically, they are our only hope. we have given them the ultimate power over us. It is up to us to show them the boundaries, the forbidden zones that they dare not enter. While a vast majority seemed acquiescent to T.I.P.S., the far left and the far right (and I include Glenn here) made enough noise to get their attention. Hay, vigilance is the cost of freedom and all that.