tossing and turning

Some people have told me that they prefer my personal posts to my political ones.

Now seems like a great time to tell them that the political posts are personal. I don't write about this stuff because I think it is important on some lofty philosophical level. I write about it because a lot of it scares the crap out of me. I lie awake nights tossing and turning over it. I get headaches and stomaches.

I just wrote this long essay listing off the various things that scare me and why they scare me but I've realized I'm just rehashing old material. The truth is that I'm just scared. I strongly object to our government's actions in the Middle East, not because of some abstract political position, but because what they're doing is likely to increase incidents of terrorism.

I'm also heartbroken. I believe in freedom but I don't know what that means anymore. I feel like everything I love about this country is going into the trash alongside everybody's carry-on shampoo.

Tony Blair recently said that global terrorism "means that traditional civil liberties arguments are not so much wrong as just made for another age." If that's the case, I don't understand what we're trying to protect here and what we're trying to export over there. Is it democracy?

What is democracy without civil liberties?

What do you love about this country that does not rely on civil liberties as its foundation?

What is democracy without justice? What is justice unhinged from its guiding principles?

These are not rhetorical questions.