Be Afraid

In this fine piece, Marilyn Penn takes Thomas Friedman to task.  Her article begins thusly (emphasis added):

In Thomas Friedman’s op ed on the Boston marathon massacre (Bring On the Next Marathon, NYT  4/17),  the boldface caption insists “We’re just not afraid anymore.”  Perhaps this is true for a traveling journalist who doesn’t use the subway daily or who isn’t forced to spend all his days in the 9/11 city of New York, but for most thinking people who work and live here, there is a great deal to fear.  We live in a porous society where criminals roam free yet politicians complain about the “discriminatory” stop and frisk policies of the police, even though they have successfully reduced crime precisely in the neighborhoods that most affect the complaining minorities and their liberal champions.  If you ride the subways, you know how many passengers wear enormous back-packs, large enough to conceal an arsenal of weapons.  These are allowed to be carried into movie theaters, playgrounds, parks, sports arenas, shopping centers, department stores and restaurants with no security checks whatsoever.   On the national front, immigration policies are more concerned with politically correct equality than with the reality of which groups are fomenting most of the terror around the world today.  Our northern and southern borders are infiltrated daily by undocumented people slipping in beyond the government’s surveillance or control.

I agree with her entire piece. Read it.

It has been a week since the Boston Marathon bombing.  There was a moment of silence today  in remembrance of the victims.  But let's keep things in perspective.  Only three people were killed.  I know you are supposed to gush over these relatively minor events and the undoubtedly horrendous suffering of the victims, but most of the gushing is the false and foolish response of feel-good liberals who have no intention of doing what is necessary to protect against the threat of radical Islam.  The Patriot's Day event was nothing compared to what could happen.  How about half of Manhattan being rendered uninhabitable  by dirty bombs? 

When that or something similar happens, will you liberals start yammering about how 'unimaginable' it was?  Look, I'm imagining it right now.  Liberals can imagine the utopian nonsense imagined by John Lennon in his asinine "Imagine." Is their imagination 'selective'?  They can imagine the impossible but not the likely. It is worth recalling that Teddy Kennedy's favorite song was Impossible Dream.

Deal with the real. And the likely.  There are no impossible ideals. (See Can What is Impossible to Achieve be an Ideal for us?)