link to original reddit post by /u/LewRothbard
As thousands of innocent victims suffer under the savage attack on the World Trade center today, I took a special interest in the manner in which our major news networks covered the disaster. On both ABC’s television coverage and NBC’s radio coverage a constant theme seemed to be present. “America has changed,” said Tom Brokaw and I am sure many other talking heads have repeated the same sentiments. However, Brokaw immediately jumped into a discussion of the effect of this tragedy and the need to “rethink” our civil liberties.
This same idea was earlier expressed by a military correspondent who had to shut up his coworkers while talking to Peter Jennings on ABC’s television coverage. Should we rethink our “civil liberties?” Or rather, should we rethink our ideas on empire? The World Trade Center has been a constant object of terrorist attack -- is it American commerce that is the problem? No, rather, it is the foreign policy of the United States Government. Our support of a brutal Israeli government at all costs, our constant meddling in the internal affairs of Middle Eastern governments and the barbarism we exhibit in our constant attacks and embargo of Iraq, these are things we may want to rethink before we turn the US into a police state. Is empire a worthwhile trade-off for liberty? Should the interests of supposedly freemen be sacrificed in order that we may continue to run the world as its only remaining “Super Power”? I think the price too high and the consequences too disastrous to even contemplate such a thought. Rather than turn the citizenry of the land of liberty into burdened pack animals, a preferable alternative would be to turn the State Department into a Mom and Pop organization, rather than the instrument of US hegemonic control that it has become. The World Trade Center did not fall because the citizenry of the United States have too much in the way of “civil liberties”, but rather because the US government has taken liberty with the rest of the world.
While it is too much to expect the Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaws of this world to dismount the high horse of imperialism and empire, it is an outrage to each and every viewer of network news to sit and listen to these blow dried imbeciles attack the very liberties and freedoms of every American! For a group that can be so sensitive to the needs and feelings of every overprotected victim group in the world, Brokaw and company sure seem to take a dim view of the free man. After the smoke clears and this disaster is put behind us, there is more to fear from the Brokaws and political elite of this country than from all the terror bombers and like savages in the Middle East and elsewhere.
by James Dale Yohe
September 11, 2001, anti-state.com (archived)