Liberal Talk Radio

The police busted a house in my neighborhood the other day. Drugs, presumably. And good riddance. I’m all for people doing what they want with their own time, but the knocks on the neighbor’s door at 4 a.m. and the needles in the parking lot were getting, um, “annoying.”

I struggle with reconciling my feelings of satisfaction with seeing a presumed dealer taken down with my basic anti-establishment views. And this is the crux of the problem, isn’t it? For too long, we liberals have hung our hats on moral relativism and drank deep of the intoxicating whine of “I’m okay, you’re okay.” So we’ve let nasties like Ashcroft and his bosses seize the initiative — our way or the highway. Aggressive action to correct the problem, or shut up and get out of the way. Even their neo-conservatism, which was original conceived by anti-Kissingerians sick of realpolitik, has been corrupted into a philosophy of power and domination.

So we liberals, with all of our talk, are merely left to sit on the sidelines and complain that the show isn’t very good, and then occassionally feel secret, guilty pleasure when the machinery of the state works in our favor. There must be something we can do to be proactive in our own way — something that gets rid of the dealers without busted doors and tactical squads — but what?

I’ll sleep with one less lock on the door tonight, but with one more trouble in my head.