Fear 5
I had a stray thought this morning while I was getting ready to attend my little Methodist church.
Maybe I would benefit from reading the Koran. Perhaps doing that would help me understand Sunni and Shiite and all those things in between.
Then I thought, gosh, if I try to borrow it from the library, will I get a visit from the FBI?
If I try to buy a copy in a bookstore, assuming I could find it, would the clerk turn me in?
If I try to download it from the web, will the NSA start monitoring me (assuming they haven’t already–they seem to be data mining, as opposed to eavesdropping)?
I think we all owe Mr. Bush a wave of gratitude for making us afraid of learning.
January 8, 2006 at 6:16 pm
It’s times like these that it pays to have a false identity set up, with a non-descript name that doesn’t raise flags. My local library, for instance, doesn’t know I’m really Steve Griffin, because my library card says Abu Hassan al-Jihadi.
Seriously, though, (if it’s not too late by now to be serious,) it’s something that’s crossed my mind too. All I can say is that I’ve surfed numerous terrorist websites from home with no calls yet. When I sat in the office of a Illinois state employee and offered to show him one such site on his desk PC, though, he almost had a heart attack. (And honestly, what was I thinking anyway???)
January 9, 2006 at 10:47 am
A period of time back, 7-8 years past, I wanted to get a copy of the book that Hitler wrote,(can’t spell the name, but I’m sure you’ll remember it) to see if I could get a handle on the mind of that nutcase. For the very same reasons you mention, I didn’t do it. I’ve also got a blog saved that’s called “Healing Iraq”, by a man who’s a dentist in Iraq, and I’ve wondered recently about the wisdom of keeping it! Thank you, Georgie-porgie!
January 9, 2006 at 6:45 pm
Well, you see, they can’t find Osama, so they are looking for Americans. Shades of Nixon’s enemies list.
Hitler’s book was Mein Kampf (My Struggle).
If you want a good handle on Hitler, try reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It’s probably as good a history as you can find.
January 9, 2006 at 7:13 pm
I read that book a long time ago… back in the early 80’s. There were some pretty dry parts, like the diplomacy leading up to the war, but I was glad I stayed with it.
January 9, 2006 at 9:29 pm
Make me feel old.
I read it in the late 60’s.