It’s for our own good

There was an explosion last Thursday at a Times Square military recruitment center.

An explosive device caused minor damage to an empty military recruiting station in Times Square early Thursday, shaking guests in hotel rooms high above.

The recruiting station, located on a traffic island surrounded by Broadway theaters and chain restaurants, has occasionally been the site of anti-war demonstrations, ranging from silent vigils to loud rallies.

The Department of Homeland Security is looking into it. If it was terrorists, it was probably the home-grown kind.

Anti-war protestors have been targeting recruitment centers, usually with picketing and vandalism. Berkeley has received its share of bad press for telling the Marines their recruitment center wasn't welcome there and seeking to pass legislation that would make recruitment centers harder to open within their city limits than porn shops. The mayor of Toledo, Ohio got a lot of flack for denying the Marines permission to conduct military exercises within the city.

I could write about the immorality of using terrorism to advance any cause. I could mention that the ends do not justify the means. I could opine that violence and destruction are never the answer. But most people know that.

What really gets me, what annoys me to the point I feel compelled to blog about it, is the arrogance and condescension of these leftist, anti-war radicals.

Recruitment centers aren't doing the hard sell. They are there, in major cities, for young people who want to explore the option of a military career. ROTC and military recruiters have already been banned from plenty of college campuses and high schools.

Recruitment centers put posters and info in their windows. Maybe some of the officers linger outside the center. I don't know. We have one downtown in my city, but I haven't really paid attention. I do see men in uniform walking along the street from time to time.

These military personnel are not roaming the street, pulling unwary men and women into their center. Marines and sailors aren't roaming Norfolk, VA and San Francisco, press-ganging people onto ships and bases like the British Royal Navy of the 17th and 18th century.

But Code Pink, the council in Berkely, and other protest groups don't see it that way. They feel they have the right to intimidate both the military and prevent young people from making up their own minds. And therin lies the arrogance.

I've said it here: people are stupid. Not so much low IQ. It's just that most people don't think and most people don't want to think.

But I would never suggest that anyone -- aside from the truly mentally disabled -- be prevented from exercising their free will and free choice.

But a lot of these groups think anyone who doesn't think like them are, to put it crudely, retarded.

They obviously can't think for themselves, they reason. If they could, they wouldn't set foot in a recruitment center. Therefore, we have to prevent them from coming into contact with anything that is evil (evil being anything they disagree with). We have to protect them from themselves.

Arrogance. Pure, unmitigated condescension. And a totalitarian mindset that scares the hell out of me. I hope these people never get into postitions of real power, not more than they have already.