My secret hope for blogs. The last few days in my aggregator have been discouraging. Today's nonsense was this from Gizmodo:

Airlines on the look out for gadgets. In light of the recent discovery a whole panoply of gadgets in al Qaeda hideouts that had been converted into weapons or bombs (like camera flashes that turned into stun guns), the Department of Homeland Security is issuing a warning to airports to be pay extra close attention to passengers with computer equipment [...] [Gizmodo]

Boing Boing is full of similar distressing items ranging from:
TSA adds "sarcasm" to list of aviation risks

[...]

to John Gilmore's recent experiences as a "suspected terrorist."

As I read these and other tidbits offered up through my aggregator and through news channels, I fear we are a civilization that has abandoned the capacity for rational thought. [...] [McGee's Musings]

Why even I -- stanchion of lighthearted optimisim, purveyor of pleasantries, and stalwart believer that the Truth shall overcome -- have days when I think most of the country has lost it's mind. But history says these are not the worst of times, and it does us good to remember how far we've come -- if for no other reason than to ensure we never go back.

From my friend Tyrone the attorney comes the following:

From "The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I," by Thomas Fleming -- what it was like at home after the United States entered WWII in 1917:

• Sen. Hiram Johnson of California led the fight to kill a one-paragraph clause in an omnibus appropriations bill that would have given the WhiteHouse and Department of War the power to censor all newspapers in the country.
• "Patriots" in Milwaukee used machine guns to stop patrons from seeing the German play "Wilhelm Tell."
• Lutheran schools and churches were raided and searched for pro-German material; former president Theodore Roosevelt called for a ban on teaching the German language in schools.
• In Lansing, Mich., a man named Powell was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for complaining about pressure to buy war bonds; the mayor of Lansing was sent to jail for contempt of court when he rose to defend Powell.
• At least 100 conscientious objectors, especially socialist political leaders, were sentenced to 10 to 30 years in federal penitentiaries; Mennonites were sent into empty fields and pursued by motorcyclists until they collapsed.
• Labor leader Eugene Debs, who supported the war, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for attacking "superpatriots." Citizens Protective League vigilantes loaded 1,200 union miners and dissidents into railroad cars and dropped them in New Mexico deserts -- "a lesson that the whole of America would do well to copy," said a Los Angeles Times editorial.
• The general counsel of the U.S. Post Office, William H. Lamar, closed several magazines, including The Nation, denouncing them for "pro-Germanism, pacifism and highbrowism."
• The Saturday Evening Post called on America to get rid of German-Americans and Irish-Americans, "the scum of the melting pot."
• Robert Goldstein, director of "Spirit of '76," a film that depicted 18th-century atrocities by British soldiers during the American revolution, was arrested and sentenced to prison for 10 years.
• Morris Ryskind was expelled from Columbia Journalism School for making fun of the school's president, Nicholas Murray Butler, who fired any faculty who spoke against the war. He went to Hollywood and wrote movies for the Marx Brothers.
• (and my personal favorite -- TF) Baseball fans at an exhibition game in Texas cheered Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers when he slid into second base spikes high and then pummeled the bleeding second baseman, Buck Herzog of the New York Giants, yelling, "German! German!"