The Current World War

We will look back on these early days of the new world order with fondness. We will remember days when we didn't have to worry about suicide bombers at the local shopping mall, at our children's school yard, or during the Friday night sporting event. We will yearn for the time when the only threat to travel came in the form of swarthy skinned youths trying to gain entry onto an international flight; when travel by train, ferry, and even automobile was still a relatively carefree endeavor.

We will recount tails of how we used to pass from city to city without even stopping at a checkpoint, for there were none. We will recall the time when passing from state to state was as simple as passing from one room in our home to another. We will talk of a time when there were no ID chips; when each individual wasn't tracked by global positioning systems; when any person could just get up, walk out of his or her house, and basically do whatever that person wanted to do even if it wasn't legal.

We will remember when we used to go to church on Sundays, or synagogue on Friday nights, or just gather in great groups to discuss our collective beliefs, or to just disagree with each other for an hour or more before disbanding and heading for an ice cream parlor, or a favorite pub. We will remember when a person could choose almost any profession and not worry about reprisals against his or her family. We will tell the children about a time when there were concerts, not just in auditoriums that were safe, but out in the parks as well. And when there weren't concerts there were lectures, and dances, and workshops, and parties. Great celebrations we will recount with joy and tell them of huge numbers of citizens who came together because they wanted to be with each other; to laugh; to cry; to love; to hate; to discover; to lose; to want; to wish; to have; to watch; to be seen; to start; to stop; to know; to learn; to listen; to sing; to dance.

Oh, there will be so many things that will have changed. So many, many things. There might come a time when a child asks you why things changed, or why things are so different. Who will you blame? And when the time comes to teach that child what it means to be an American, who among us will have the audacity to claim that being an American means having freedom? Make no mistake. Our freedom, in its entirety is as delicate and easily lost as our ability to carry liquid onto an airplane. Who would have thought that a basic privilege such as that could be sideswiped so easily and completely, and yet in the course of just a few hours, not being able to posses a beverage became normal, accepted, even necessary. How long will it be before we fondly recall a time when you could just go to a faucet and drink the water that came out?

I'm not sure anyone has a good answer to the question of how we are going to preserve what little freedom we have left, but the answer had better come soon. And when it does, it will only be effective if it is emblazoned in our hearts and souls to the same degree as the hate that is held so dearly in the hearts and souls of those freakish pieces of human garbage that are gaining so much ground in the real world war: The war to remain free.