I just think that there's a real dilemma that Americans are struggling with - balancing the need for domestic security with preservation of civil liberties and the rule of law. Not easy.

Possibly. But it's unlikely.

What is more likely is that a lot of Americans take their civil liberties very much for granted and consider only the 'national security' aspect - when they consider these issues at all. I seriously doubt there's so much as a 'balancing act' as you may think.

Keep in mind that the Bushites push 'national security' issues relentlessly - but mention the implications for the rights of citizens not at all. And so do their enablers in the MSM. Because that's what Bushites want people to think about, and to not think about. So a lot of people do just that.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear-kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor-with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it ...

- General Douglas MacArthur

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

- James Madison

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

- John Adams

Some day many people may wake up to find that their 'rights and freedoms' have disappeared overnight, and that will be a great surprise to them.

But it will be no surprise to me. And it won't be a surprise to a few thousand other people. Current circumstances favor it.

We have seen it before:

Noch weiz ich an im mêre | Daz mir ist bekant,
Einen lintrachen | Sluoc des heldes hant,
Er badet sich in dem bluote: | Sîn hût wart hurnîn,
Des snîdet in kein wâfen: | Daz ist dicke worden schîn.

- Das Nibelungenlied

And I know even more, more I can tell.
Once, by his violent hand, a dragon fell.
He bathed in blood, grew hard, and can't be slain.
And many have seen this again

and yet again.

Keep in mind that the neocons would not have gone through so much trouble, and would not have risked so much prison time, unless they very much intended to succeed in sweeping away the Constitution in favor of their New World Order. And they do not seem much worried about failing.

The jihadis are irrational actors. They want to die, hence the usual deterrents are pointless. And they have to get lucky only once.

"And therefore we should exterminate the entire population of Islam." Yeah, we've heard this before, but it was after a Young Republican meeting featuring Ralph Reed where he exhorted the minions to murder Democrats en masse. Been there, done that.

But you're right, some of them are irrational, like that good buddy Tim McVeigh was irrational. But most are not like that, and very few would be, except for the provocation and desperation they're driven to by militaristic imperialist Bushites.

Neocons depend on Muslim extremism to serve as a pretext for conquest and for war profiteering. This is why the US military seems to "lose" a couple of hundred thousand weapons to "al-Queda" every couple of months: the insurgency is needed as part of the pretext, and they have means of support also.

We are not deceived either as to neocon intentions or as to neocon means, and not at all towards neocon propaganda.

The jihadis are irrational actors. They want to die, hence the usual deterrents are pointless. And they have to get lucky only once.

We're past this kind of vapid fearmongering. That was the whole point of Greenwald's post today. Perhaps the possibility that this sort 'o trash talk could be discredited failed to penetrate your turgid consciousness, but it really has happened.

That old lame style o' lyin' jest ain't cuttin' it for ya no mo', neocon, so why don't you jest try startin' another train of lies? Fresh ones would be appreciated. The old ones are very stale.

It'll give you something to do in your spare time.

"A sure sign of a person with nothing to say is the person who puts words into another's mouth to prove his own point."

Hit a sore spot, didn't I, neocon?

Glad I flushed you out.

You've been discredited, Bushite. Wanna talk about it?

Verily I say unto you, The only thing you have to fear is - fear itself. Remember that FDR said this to you, and that you were to take heart and to heed this.

The meaning is that you are to resist the fearmongering and to deplore the power the fearmongers would have over you, and that you are to have courage against them.

Who will swear to their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, to re-establish the blessings of liberty on themselves and their posterity against these outrages against ourselves?

That is the question.

Anyone who think that engaging in the classic strawman argument somehow "flushed out" anyone is not just insane but just plain stupid.

-- Titus Pullo

Gotcha, neocon. You're done. Stick a fork in 'ya and you will moo.

Go home.