America+-+'Any+Means+Necessary'

America: "Any Means Necessary" When it gets down to the bare basics, I think Williams is arguing on the question of whether or not the USA Patriot Act works, and she raises some interesting points. The first thing that caught my eye was Williams's statement that "callers to radio programs say that we don't always have the "luxury of following all the rules" (795)". To me, it doesn't seem that we'd be giving up the ability to follow the rules, that would be freedom, but we're creating more rules that take away freedoms, which is William's entire point. It's interesting, as a bit of a continuation to "Easy in the Harness", that this is exactly what rules are put into place for: they keep us safe, and deep down, so the argument goes, we know that the rules are really best for us. This is the logical conclusion to that argument; and we aren't necessarily freer because of it: "if a government intelligence agency "thinks you're under the control of a foreign government, they can wiretap you ... search your house ... break into your home ... and never tell you that they've done it" (794)." So if anyone wants to argue that you can still think what you want, and speak what you want, and do what you want, as long as you follow the rules, there shouldn't be anything to worry about. But, then I don't think you're really free, you've willingly given up the right, or freedom, of privacy, but the rules know best don't they? Except giving up one freedom leaves you with fewer freedoms, until you're at the mercy of the government, doing exactly as they wish. Conspiracy-esque and exagerated, yes, but the possibility lingers.

Possibilities, that's another thing Williams touches on. She argues that the FBI knows the past, and the CIA is involved in only prediciting the future, but the future can never truly be prevented. In regards to everyone's hope that the Patriot Act would end all halt all other American-aimed terrorist attacks, she says that "no such measures were apt to revealed the World Trade Center hijackers; no such measures were likely to have prevented Timothy McVeigh's bombing (795)". Those in favor of the Patriot Act would argue that the act did its job; it's prevented numerous attacks. The problem is that they're arguing the future, and that just doesn't work. It's like in __Minority Report__, the three psychics were predicting dozens of crimes that were to be committed, and the police then arrested the "crimminal" before the crime actually happened. The interesting thing in __Minority Report__ is that the crimes were never actually committed, so were the "crimminals" crimminals? It's the same question when arguing the future, did we actually prevent this many attacks, did we actually save that many lives, and where's the proof? To supporters of the act saying that we'd be better off just letting the attacks happening and going from there sounds horrifyingly cynical, but it is the only way to keep justice: to do the time, you have to commit the crime, so we have to let you commit the crime first. The risk can be reduced, as Williams says, but that's all we can do in these large-scale attacks.

I think one of the key bits of Williams's article is in the last paragraph, "stoked by tragedy and dread, the creativity of our paranoia is in overdrive right now. We must take a deep ... breath ... (796)." I definitely see paranoia in the world right now, if "Let's Stop Scaring Our Kids" is any indication, we're afraid of everything. We're forcing our children into states of near perpetual childhood, and even if we think we're being liberal on the subject, just by saying that the kid should've waited four or five years is conforming to fear nonetheless, eventually he'll be too young even at that age. On the world scale, we're no better, maybe even doing ourselves in: there've been tons of doomsday prophecies going around, one scheduled in October, 2012, Revelations, Nostradamus, we keep seeing the end of the world everywhere we turn. Except it's not ending, and it probably won't for a very long time; these predictions are everywhere in history: everyone assumes they're the special "chosen generation", and they simply aren't. We do need to take a breath and realize not everyone is out to get us. If we keep ourselves in this perpetual fear, we'll lose everything we're suppose to stand for, and then we really will lose all of our freedom.