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RESTORING CONFIDENCE IN GOVERNMENT a "must do" for maintaining solidarity BY Dorothy Anne Seese (Forwarded by Jackie Juntti) 9/25/01 - We've had almost two weeks of patriotic reaction and over-reaction to the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The relief efforts for those who suffered the loss of family members and other loved ones in these attacks have been a great tribute to American generosity in time of national distress. However, for rebuilding the solidarity of a badly divided nation, emotion will not last. Our resolve to win is not determined by the various services, memorials, tributes and programs. It is built by restoring confidence in our government, a confidence that went to the bottom of the well over the past decade. We've had too much government and misuse of government over our own citizens while it is now obvious that the illegal aliens and foreign nationals living on expired visas contributed to the catastrophic events we've just had, and the ongoing fear of those that might occur. It would be well to note here that it's going to be tough to rally the support of the ailing farmers in the Klamath Falls basin while their water supply is still cut off and the headgates are still padlocked. It 's going to be very tough, unless our government feels like bailing its citizens out of the trouble that were caused by stupid "bozone" environmental policies from our government. The government rushes to the aid of airlines but not farmers who feed us. The Klamath Falls issue needs to be addressed, but we're too busy creating another level of government called "Homeland Security" and ... of all things ... putting Congressman Gary Condit on some homeland security committee. We've already established his "standard" of ethics. Is this a portent that the Homeland Security office is a precursor of an American KGB? There are other abuses of government against citizens that need to be addressed and corrected before the needed solidarity of purpose can be achieved. We may have not had much terrorism in the Clinton era, but we're paying the price now for the eight year party of give-aways to our enemies that bought the illusion of peace. Now we're at war. We need an Office of Homeland Freedom, not Homeland Security. Security has always been the job of the FBI and the CIA or its World War II predecessor. Another level of government that does nothing but invent more ways to identify our citizens while hostile aliens run amok is senseless and wasteful. Some may feel a sense of security about it, but a "sense" of security is another illusion, as was the "peace" of the Clinton era. The Pax Clintona ended with the terrorist war we have on our hands now, and a "sense of security" by an Office of Homeland Security could end in a nightmare of martial law and suspension of our constitutional freedoms. Government is supposed to protect us? We first need to have a government that stops harassing its citizens and taking away the lands and the productivity of many rural citizens. No wonder there are so many bumper stickers that read "I love my country but I don't trust my government." Right now, the American flag may have covered some of those stickers, in an outward show of unity, but underneath, they're still in place. Yes we need to be united, we need to have a toughened resolve like never before, but we first need to make certain that our government gets busy correcting the wrongs it has committed against its own citizenry before we can give it our full faith and confidence. The sloppiness of the past decade, that allowed our national security and military secrets to not only be compromised but freely handed out to our potential and known enemies has dampened a lot of the resolve we now need to pull together or be pulled apart by a long, hard conflict. And it's a bit confusing why we need the major portion of the American fleet in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf where our enemies can suicide-bomb them as easily as they did the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Do you see why we need to restore confidence in our government? Now the government is considering a national I.D. card for citizens, and just what kind of "card" do illegal aliens get? Aliens need tracking, not citizens. Citizens need relief from growing government controls and some glaring government abuses, particularly those that provide for land grabs, property confiscation and invasion of privacy. Yes we have a form of unity now in the wake of disaster, but we are also experiencing some national trauma and knee-jerk reactions. Firearms sales are at an all-time high, because the sale of firearms could become illegal overnight. We have gotten a paranoid mentality from all the media hype about chem-bio warfare, and that has grounded cropdusting planes at the possible expense of our food supply. We can't tell a long-time crop duster whose plane and face is known to the farmers -- from a terrorist? SIGH. Oh yes we did some very stupid things immediately after the start of World War II and we're still paying for some of them. The nation has Arab-mania now about possible hijackers. I heard one talk show host saying our new national phobia is against "Arabs" ... some of whom are Christian. Arab is an ethnic group and while most are Muslim, not all are. Many non-Arabs are Muslims. It was a great temptation to call this speaker and inform him that Afghanis are not Arabs and neither are Pakistanis. Osama bin Laden is an Arab, but his bond with Afghanistan is the common radical element of the Islamic religion, not ethnicity. Iranians are not Arabs either, even though the nation is Islamic. Even our terminology is confused, because we know so little about the Middle East. In Arizona, an Indian Sikh was shot dead by an anti-Arab lunatic because he was mistaken for an "Arab". During World War II, the Chinatown area of Los Angeles was open for business and many Chinese restaurants did a thriving business. Frankly, I am unable to differentiate between Chinese, Japanese, Korean or other East Asian by looking at their faces. Also during World War II, our Public Enemy No. 1 was a German citizen named Adolf ... and many Germans settled in this country, with heavy concentrations in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Now how did our government tell an American of Germanic origin from a "German"? During World War II we were a much simpler folk, and we had nothing we could do other than to trust our much-smaller government to handle the matter and pray for our safety. Just how good a job they did is still a matter on which books containing divergent opinions are being written. Our government's first job is to restore the full faith and confidence of patriotic American citizens in its commitment to our constitutional freedoms, its repudiation of the senseless "bozone" environmentalism, and the repayment of its debt to the citizens who have been wronged, in Klamath Falls and elsewhere. We also need to focus on just what this Homeland Security Office intends to do. A lot depends on whether they are going to coordinate the efforts of bureaus that should be doing their job without such an office, or police the citizenry right out of their remaining constitutional rights. Yes, we have a war to fight, I believe we're willing to fight it. For just how long, I am unsure. The more reparations the government makes to its citizens, the more they will be willing to sacrifice for their country. It's a two-way street. Obedience may be enforceable, but loyalty is a matter of heart and conscience. We don't want and won't tolerate a Taliban here ... Afghani or American made.
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