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Hey, I'm willing to come over and help you dig your bomb shelter is you supply the beer. But I'll be digging with a smile on my face.
There are lots of "ifs" attached to your doomsday predictions.
As I said earlier, I don't think anyone questions that bad things could happen to our republic and our freedoms if another big terrorist attack took place. Even a sound foreign policy can't guarantee that will never happen.
But I reject your fearful vision of the future, and I do it with my feet firmly planted in reality. Yours is not a message designed to motivate people, to bring people together or to move us forward.
With a rubber stamp Congress in place, Bush was able to embrace the Yoo Doctrine you mention. But Congress, the courts and political reality are already forcing the rollback of many of those radical assertions. Even with the failure of Congress, the system is working.
Your paranoid vision of the future is not based on the trendline. To some degree, you are fighting the last war. Your argument is now completely dependant on uncertain negative events in the future.
The opportunity here is to give people an optimistic view of the future, to show them the kind of America we can become, with greater freedoms, compassion and opportunity. That's how we prevent the dark forces from surging again.
Let the right get more shrill. Ultimately, it will only turn people off. The less relevant they become, the louder they will grow. Let them starve. Or mock them. They hate that. If you hate back, they win.
