Subject: Re: Just an item of interest
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Wed Jun 26 2002 - 02:56:41 EDT
It came as a great disillusionment to a little boy reared
on black & whites about intrepid G-Men to learn when
he grew up that the FBI was regarded by his intellectual
buddies as simply another version of the Geheimstaatspolizei
run by an obese pervert in a pink tutu. Could that really be
the case? he wondered. How awful.
There have always been secret policemen (along with their
secret, Pythonesque balls) & I, as Tim's pop-history reading
Brit, am really quite glad. Without them, Fawkes would probably
have blown up our Parliament, the Fenians Queen Victoria &
their successors an even greater number of my own present day
countrymen. Anyone living in a state threatened by internal
enemies (& there always are such people) who thinks it can
survive without underhand, 'unconstitutional' defences will
eventually waken up, not in an FBI interrogation room but in
something rather more reminiscent of the Lubianka.
Suppose someone with a swarthy skin, cross eyes, a broken nose,
smelling of stale kebab & speaking fractured Levantine English
turned up at your local library asking for the latest books on
do-it-yourself explosives & a map to the nearest nuclear plant.
Wouldn't you consider checking his address on the card?
Constitution, schmonstitution, keep up the protests, chaps.
It helps maintain the balance between you libertines & us
authoritarians - without which no civilisation can survive.
But not too much self righteousness. The drains will always need
clearing & the bed pans emptying. That lovely integrity of yours
depends on not being asked to do it yourselves.
Scottie B.
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