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08/18/2004: "Michelle Malkin's Moronic Malediction"
It's Wednesday, which means two things. That crazy guy with the
hand-lettered sign that reads "Kobe is Inoceent" will be walking in circles
outside of city hall and Michelle "PFMYV" Malkin's latest column has been
posted. Coincidence?
M&M's column is here
You might wanna store that URL in your medicine cabinet, just in case you
ever need to induce vomiting.
This week, Double-M is not only having a bout with apoplexy over the usual
suspects (Anybody who dares to question the divinely inspired policies of
the Bush Administration v2.0), but she's finally also managing to get some
use outta that thesaurus I sent her.
The New York Times, American Civil Liberties Union, anti-Bush protesters
and Muslim activists are all apoplectic over the FBI's efforts to prevent
violence and terrorism. Agents are -- gasp -- knocking on doors and asking
questions. Based on these basic intelligence-gathering actions, the civil
liberties alarmists are convinced that the constitutional sky is
falling.
Right. Nothing to worry about. Just armed agents of the Government
questioning citizens who may be planning on exercising their Constitutional
right to free assembly. Nothing to see here. Move along you lookeeloos.
On Monday, the Times published a front-page story that painted FBI
agents as jack-booted thugs bent on scaring the pants off of innocent,
do-gooder college kids. A Tuesday Times editorial bemoaned how "(s)ix
investigators recently descended on Sarah Bardwell, a 21-year-old intern
with a Denver antiwar group, who quite reasonably took away the message
that the government was watching her closely." The editorialists concluded:
"The knock on the door from government investigators asking about political
activities is the stuff of totalitarian regimes."
Here's The Times article, just in case your People's Revolutionary
Paper-Delivery Worker was running late for a flag burning party and forgot
to deliver your copy of Pravda, comrade.
Now, I may be completely unfamiliar with FBI procedure, but does it really
take six agents to question one smelly Hippie chick? Maybe - and
I've never read the FBI handbook - it would be a better idea to have
one agent interview Ms. Hairy Armpits 2004, and send the other
five out to have a look around places like chemical plants and
airports. Just a thought. Malkin, of course, is blissfully unencumbered by
thoughts:
Oh, give me a break. Getting shocked with cattle prods for practicing
one's faith is the "stuff of totalitarian regimes." Getting locked up in an
iron maiden for losing a soccer match is the "stuff of totalitarian
regimes." Answering a few questions about possible domestic terrorism is
the stuff of responsible citizenship.
But it doesn't always start with cattle prods and iron maidens, does it?
No, it starts with us forking over little bits of our freedom in order to
assure that Willie Horton doesn't move in next-door and ends with our
children turning us in to the Bureau of Patriotism for not owning an SUV.
The guy who used to own my house, Ben Franklin, said it best - "People who
exchange freedom for security get neither."
Maybe I'm screwed up from all of those books that I've read, but I seen to
remember the FBI spending a good chunk of the 60's and 70's infiltrating
various left-wing groups and learning nothing of value except on which
balcony Martin Luther King would be standing. My favorite infiltration
story, by the way, involves a local cop and a FBI agent who had
independently infiltrated some small commie group. They then spent a
year-and-a-half keeping an eye on each other.
Agents are not targeting every tattooed Bush hater and handcuffing every
pacifist grandma in an insidious effort to chill free speech. They are
simply trying to be what every hindsight hypocrite has asked them to be:
proactive and preemptive.
When they came for the smelly, Hacky Sac playing, hippies, I didn't speak
up, because I hate hippies. When they came for that A-rab fellow at the
7-11, I didn't speak up, because he once charged me $9.98 for a pudding-pop
and a copy of KERRANG!. When they finally came for me, I had to
share a cell in Guantanamo Bay with a smelly hippie and an angry A-rab
because there was no one left to speak up.
