Are we at war?

That is the question on which the President tells us the next election will turn. He's right. The Democrats, especially those in the liberal media, would like it to be anything else, the economy, the "diversion" of Iraq or the allegedly unconstitutional and "tyrannical" acts of the President in the name of national defense. They're in denial about the nature of this war because they put their own access to power above democracy, national security and safety.

Civil Libertarians can argue about whether our civil liberties were damages by measures taken after the attacks. I think we need a national ID and profiling that includes young middle eastern men as well as behavioral indications. I also think that if we don't get more serious about fighing these people, we'll be hit again and I think my right to be anonymous is not worth my life. Most of the things the ACLU fusses about are luxuries we enjoy because we are safe. Most of history hasn't been like that. Our idyll is at an end. We had better pay attention to our duties and responsibiliites and not just our privileges before we find ourselves facing a real theocracy, and I don't mean Jerry Falwell. He'd be a sweetheart next to Khatami or Khomeini. Yet the hatred toward him, religious people ingeneral and the President Bush, who has never said anything that suggests he wants a theocracy, would make one think it is impossible to live without aanonymity, drugs, pornography and obscenity. Political correctness will be suicide if we don't get real about our priorities pretty soon.

Governments are supposed to deliver civil order, public safety and protect a limited number of personal rights against the majority. But the rights do not swallow up the basic principle of majority rule. Otherwise, why live in a society where your family is constantly under assault by influences you hate? We have an ancient common law concerning public and private nuisances, which is being gutted in the name of civil liberties. It's illegal for government to even note the contributions religion has made to our society and culture. The basic argument is that any recommendation or support constitutes compulsion. None of us has the world we would like, but that doesn't mean that we can't have some of it if we have the votes. It's called community and it deserves to be defended too. This obsession with letting everybody challenge the common will for everything is making us vulnerable and defenseless.

We need to remember that preventing 9/11 would have been infinitely preferable to suffering through it so that the liberties of the terrorists weren't infringed on. At some point we all have to accept that we don't get everything we want. It's a balance. We give up total freedom in exchange for the benefits of living in society. The balance is off, thanks to those who want to make everything a new civil liberty.