There are have been some enlightening posts over at blackprof.com. Spencer Overton, who knows Judge Taylor personally, posted about his respect for her. The conversation that follows in the comments as well as this follow-up post by Marc Lamont Hill are quite enlightening.
I would argue that Judge Hill's ruling on the NSA surveillance program and the subsequent cheering of this ruling is a testament to how well this country is protected. The war is still distant. Using children to blow up airlines or pizza parlors is something you read about in the newspaper. It has no more reality to us than the latest episode of Lost.
Post-9/11, we've managed to keep the battle outside of America. Judge Taylor and the ACLU lawyers are safe in their homes and drive to work in the morning to debate the finer points of civil liberties in a clean, well-lit, comfortable court room. They don't know anyone who has been killed or injured in a domestic terrorist attack since 9/11. The war is on and while they may acknowledge it, they don't viscerally know it.
What the commenters and writers at blackprof don't grasp is that we could very well lose the war. An entire continent of allies is so culturally exhausted that they will strike their colors rather than risk antogonizing the Islamofascist enemies in their midst. The consequences of Europe's slow-motion surrender is too far away for them to realize its significance.
In 1940, as the Wehrmacht was breaking through Allied lines in France and streaking for the sea, Churchill visited Paris to consult with the French government on that crisis. What he found shocked and terrified him. The French were defeated. An entire generation of Frenchmen had been slaughtered in the First World War and this new German onslaught was simply too much to take. While they had yet to surrender, they had, for all intents and purposes, given up.
What followed for Enlgand was the Blitz. This is what it looked like.
The money quote:"We haven't had a quiet night now for more than five weeks. They'll be over tonight and they'll destroy a few buildings and kill a few people. Probably some of the people you are watching now."
Our cities don't look like this yet. The war is still theoretical for many and a neocon fantasy for others. The gravity of the French capitulation was obvious to Churchill, but the effects of the current emasculation of Europe is still invisible to most. And thus we arrive at Judge Taylor's ruling and the reaction to it.
Throughout the Winter of 1939-40, the many of the British derided the Nazis and their "Sitzkrieg". It took the fall of France and the Blitz to wake them from their complacency. That's where we are now. We're at war, but it looks nothing like any of the wars from our past that we all took seriously. 2500 dead was a single island in the Pacific in WW II and a comparitively easy victory at that. In Iraq, our media counts each death individually and has a spasm when it passes 2500.
The war isn't going badly enough yet for Judge Taylor and her supporters to understand that it really is a war. This one is slower in developing than the six months it took to go from Sitzkrieg to Blitz, but it is coming. When the bombs hit our cities, they won't fall from the the air, but will ride the taxi beside us and walk in the vest of the fellow on our elevator. The result will be the same. Until then, some can pretend it's not coming, just like they did in the Winter of 1939-40.
The Feline Theocracy's College of Cardinals has a good take on this, too.
1 comment:
I'll never understand why most Americans refuse to pay attention to threats until it is to late. It's a little late to be looking for the hunting rifle if the Big Bad Wolf is already huffing and puffing at your front door.
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