I Wish I Were Ignorant

Thirteen years ago this week, America changed.

What had once been a country concerned with freedom and individual rights had now become a militarized country – – where freedom of speech and action has taken second place to restrictions and repression.

We see it in our everyday lives.   Our police are more militarized,  gates and barbed wire surround our government facilities and ID tags hand from the necks of just about every government worker.

Traveling is the best example.   We wait, patiently in long security lines – – to remove our shoes, get rid of our liquids and take our lap tops out of their carrying cases.

If you have foreign friends it’s becoming more and more difficult for them to enter this country.   And going to Canada today takes the same amount of scrutiny it once did to get into China.

9-11 changed American society.   We can debate whether or not these changes were needed; we can debate how deep these changes run; but we can’t debate that they have changed us profoundly as a country.

If the purpose of the 9-11 hijackers was to bring fear to American shores then they have accomplished their purposes – – at least as far as the government is concerned.

We’ve been at war for 13 years attacking and degrading the ability of foreign terrorists to attack the — homeland.

We’ve accomplished that goal for the most part, but the danger still exists that someone, somewhere will be able to achieve another 9-11 style attack, this time with gas or a nuclear component.

With school starting last week it dawned on me that children entering high school this year have absolutely no concept of what this country was like before 9-11.

To them, the added security, the gates , the barbed wire, the police with Uzis and tanks, is just a normal part of life.  They know no difference.

I’m happy for them. In their ignorance they can accept what this country has become.

For the rest of us – – those who have been around prior to 9-11, we mourn for what we have lost.

We mourn our lack of freedom, our lack of respect for our government, we mourn for our lack of innocence.

We mourn for the use of the word – – homeland.   Somehow that smacks of Nazi Germany – in my mind.