Thanks to the Rittenhouse Review for pointing out today's editorial in the New York Sun. It is perhaps one of the most offensive, anti-democratic screeds I have ever read. It applauds the NYC government for blocking the attempt to put together an anti-war protest on Feb. 15th because, if the protest were allowed to proceed, it might dissuade Bush from going to war. (Imagine that!) It then goes on to say that, if this were to happen, it would be tantamount to treason because Sadaam is an enemy of the US and stopping a war against him is providing him aid and comfort. It then advocates that the government send along observers to take down names and faces for eventual trial for treason. Finally, it says this:

To those concerned about civil liberties, we’d cite the pragmatic argument made last night by, of all people, the New York Times’s three-time Pulitzer-Prize winning foreign affairs columnist, Thos. [sic] Friedman. “I believe we are one more 9/11 away from the end of the open society,” Mr. Friedman told an American Jewish Committee dinner honoring the chief executive of the New York Times Company, Russell Lewis. His point was that if terrorists strike again at America and kill large numbers of Americans, the pressure to curb civil liberties and civil rights will be “enormous and unstoppable.” What we took from that was that the more successful the protesters are in making their case in New York, the less chance they’ll have the precious constitutional freedom to protest here the next time around.

You get the logic here? If there is another terrorist attack, the government will crack down on civil liberties. So, we have to go to war to prevent that from happening. But, if the protesters have their way, we might not go to war. Therefore, we have to crack down on their civil liberties. Now there is a fine example of burn-the-village-in-order-to-save-it thinking!