Today marks the anniversary of 9/11. It was nine years ago today that the World Trade Center came down and the world changed. Changed mostly for the worst. And one way in which things have gotten worse is that the concept of freedom has lost all meaning.

Americans are taught from an early age that we’re lucky because we have freedom. This is certainly what I was taught. And furthermore, I was taught that the citizens of other countries are not really free, even if they think they are. Sure, they may have been told that they are free (by their oppressive governments) but they in fact are not free, but merely brainwashed. (This is in contrast to us Americans, who are not brainwashed at all.)

Freedom is, we are told, at the core of what it means to be an American. And so after 9/11, freedom was Bush’s rallying cry. “They hate us because we have freedom.” Then he took us to war using the preposterous idea that it would increase the freedoms of both Americans and those in the middle East.

Well, apparently Americans love war, because now — now that we’re winding one of the foreign wars down, we’re told that we need to wage another war. This war is a war against our own government, and again, freedom is the rallying cry. “Less government = More freedom”, we are told. Read More →

We all knew there would be opposition to Obama’s presidency. We all knew that he would be attacked and maligned. This would have been true regardless of his politics. But I, for one, have been surprised by how cartoonishly absurd and hallucinatory the opposition is.

“When the focus is narrowed to Republicans, a Harris poll finds 57 percent of party members believe he is a Muslim, 22% believe he “wants the terrorists to win,” and 24% believe he is the Antichrist.” (Roger Ebert, Sept. 1st 2010)

If this is true — if over half of republicans think that Obama is a Muslim and one in four actually thinks he’s the Antichrist, then there really is no point in debate. There’s no point in talking about this. There is no point because the US is completely screwed.

It’s one thing to disagree over economic or military policy. It’s one thing to argue over whether our government should be strong or weak. But what we’re seeing here is complete and hysterical meltdown. If this is the reaction that conservatives have to having a progressive president with an unusual name, what would they do if Hitler came back to life and was elected president? Would their reaction be any more extreme?

Or, more to the point, could their reaction be any more extreme?