The web page of today's
Chicago Tribune asks
What's your reaction?
Is President Bush's eavesdropping authorization an unacceptable violation of rights? Or is it a necessary component of the war against terror?
E-mail us [ctc-tribletter "at" tribune.com] a paragraph of your thoughts. Submissions must include your name and hometown.
Reponses will be considered for Friday's Commentary page in the newspaper and online.
My "paragraph," below the fold.
What's my reaction to the latest spying revelations concerning NSA
wiretaps and FBI surveillance of activists here in the U.S., as various
as PETA and the Catholic Workers? I wish I could say surprised. But that
would be naive. As many Holocaust survivors have told me in the past
few years, "This is how it happens." The creep toward fascism begins
with very small erosions, each one only slightly worse than the next,
designed for you to react in only one way: to do nothing. Nothing is all
that most people must do before we suddenly look around one day,
terrified, and wonder where the American we know, went. I can promise
them all, I won't sit by and do nothing while our president crowns
himself king, and files it under "for our own protection."
We know our history. We remember.
Signed,
[ME]