Enemies of the State

 Earlier this year federal officials announced they will sic their enforcers on, among others,  people with “anti-authority ideologies”. We had a holiday Monday honoring a man whose ideology vigorously opposed authority in the segregated and oppressive south. We will have another in a few weeks honoring one man whose ideology led him to lead a  rebellion against authority and to refuse to accept the authority of a king when he could have had it and another man whose ideology led him to a life of opposing and finally defeating  the authority that allowed some people to own others as slaves.  We honor these men and others such as Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Frederick Douglass whose ideology put them in opposition to both the authorities of their time and the idea of a dominating, controlling authority over the lives and actions of human beings. Anti- authority ideology, explicit or otherwise, is a basic  American characteristic.  The country was founded on the anti-authority ideology that people have unalienable rights that governments may not violate. Its best citizens have worked and struggled to live up to the ideas of that ideology ever since.   

So  I expect the new task force or whatever the feds  call it will have to be a large outfit. They have a whole lot of ground to cover – everyone in the country who believes in the liberal principles of liberty, individual rights, and limited government.  Of course one could argue that this is not what our civil masters meant at all, that they were really talking about only people committing or inciting others to commit crimes for political reasons and never intended to go after political dissenters for their beliefs. Well, that is not what they said, and it surely would have made better political sense for them to have done so, if they meant only that.  The prudent thing is to assume that the meant what they said, that they meant it as a threat, and that they want to treat those with political beliefs they disapprove of as enemies of the state.  The Twentieth Century should have taught people that if someone says he is out to get you, it is a good idea to take him at his word, just in case.