Liberty in the Age of Terrorism
The Boston Marathon bombing, horrific in and of itself, is made far worse by our response to it. For one thing, hate is on the march. Listen to the conversation between a Washington, D.C. cabbie – a Muslim from Somalia – and his crazed passenger, who rants that the Koran mandates death for unbelievers and demands the poor guy “denounce 9/11.” The passenger then assaults the cabbie, who reportedly suffered a fractured jaw.
Terror, such as we saw in Boston, is our doorway into Bizarro World, where up is down and everything is stood on its head. Sen. Rand Paul, leader of the GOP’s libertarian wing, responded to the Boston bombing by writing a letter to Harry Reid averring we ought to forget about immigration reform and suggesting “We suspend student visas, or at least those from high-risk areas, pending an investigation into the national security implications of this program” And, of course, the response of law enforcement was to shut down an entire city, ordering people to stay in their homes and imposing what amounted to martial law. Luckily for the cops, someone violated that order, went out to get a breath of fresh air, and saw Dzhokhar’s blood trickling out of a boat parked in the back yard.