“I’m worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don’t appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us — more evil, or as evil, as Nazism and probably more dangerous than the Soviet Communists we fought during the long Cold War,” Mr. Lieberman said.
Okay, that's just bonkers. As Kos put it:
More evil than the guys who gassed 6 million Jews?
More dangerous than the guys who had thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at us and could've snuffed out all life on the planet at the press of a button?
Lieberman's pushed to the superdupercrazymost extreme an old conservative canard: that the War on Terrorism is The Greatest Threat America Has Ever Faced. It's become conventional wisdom to the point that people do double-takes when you dare to question it. It's also boneheadedly stupid when you think about it.
Really? The Greatest Threat Ever? Greater than when we fought Britain, back when the sun never set on its empire, and we were a pipsqueak country full of bumpkins constantly watching our left flank for the Indians? A greater threat than that posed by the tearing asunder of our country in the Civil War, where Americans slaughtered 365,000 of their brothers? A greater threat than WWII, where we fought 2 empires at the same time, one of whom had just finished conquering the entirety of Europe, and the other of whom had, among their other accomplishments, kicked the dogshit out of Russia and then China? A greater threat than the Soviet war machine and nuclear arsenal?
I'm not saying terrorism isn't a genuine threat, but c'mon, people. Take a step back and look again. We've survived worse (and without sacrificing our civil liberties, to boot). The only thing we really have to fear is losing all sense of perspective, and tossing the rule of law and the Bill of Rights because of it.
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