I decided to observe Patriot Day (not Patriot's Day; the apostrophe is important) in a substantive way by doing two things every September 11^th:

1. I'm not going to watch any TV, nor listen to any radio
   
2. This year, I joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and every subsequent year I'm sending in my $65 membership renewal

Why these two things? Because I think 9-11 is being overblown in the media in order to attract eyeballs, and being overblown in Washington in order to pass draconian legislation aimed at restricting liberty. So I decided that instead of useless, empty gestures like pinning little flags on my lapel, watching the talking heads on TV pimp out the memory of the dead for ratings, or blindly accepting that the government can do whatever they want in spite of what the Founding Father's said and did, that I'd try to do something constructive and positive. I didn't know what form that something would take until just this morning, though.

I was thinking last night about how 9-11 has affected me. I couldn't think of anything positive or uplifgting. Nothing has touched my heart. If nothing else, I've only become more scared of the government. The USA PATRIOT Act essentially means the federal government can wiretap anyone at anytime, with no cause whatsoever. Any sort of privacy, 1^st amendment be damned, goes out the window in the name of catching enemies both foreign and domestic. Ashcroft has held hundreds of people in secret jails without having charged them with a crimes. Hearings about those crimes are behind closed doors. People are being detained (or merely assaulted by citizenry) simply because of how they look. Six dollar an hour airport security guards (you get bumped to eight bucks an hour if you have a criminal record) are needlessly harassing kids and old men, some of whom are decorated war heroes. The TIPS debacle meant the mailman would become an agent of Big Brother (luckily TIPS died a richly deserved death before it could terrorize anyone; who thought TIPS was a good idea?).

Thinking about all of this made my head spin. What kind of country will my children live in? None of the things mentioned above will do anything to combat or prevent terrorism. Many of them will merely serve to place the Federal government in the role of terrorist against its own populace. It's all being done in the name of patriotism, and nobody can call any of it into question without be branded as "unpatriotic".

Patriotism is being taken too far, and people have been abusing both the 9-11 tragedy and the word patriot itself. Even Dan Rather has said "I worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend." Violent nationalism we don't need. The cure can't kill the patient. We don't want the terrorists to win.

I'm as patriotic as a guy can be. I've even got a (lit) flag flying outside my house this very minute. Why not? I'm proud of my country and nationality. But enough is enough. To paraphrase a wiser fellow than me: I don't ever want to forget 9-11, but I don't want to be constantly reminded of it either. I'm going to get on with my life (which hopefully won't include any mention of Lisa Beamer, or which won't have me hear the phrase "Let's roll" ever again), and observe the event in a way that will help preserve what really makes this country great: the freedoms of its people. I'm only one person, but I figure every little bit helps.