Give Me Your Fingerprints

Thomas Friedman suggests in his latest article that Bush go to Europe and listen. Just listen. After hearing Tony Blair giving a speech at the World Economic Forum that talked more about American than about England, I think he's right. And he hits on another concern as well, a concern that many Americans have, not to mention Europeans:

Europeans love to make fun of naïve American optimism, but deep down, they envy it and they want America to be that open, foreigner-embracing, carefree, goofily enthusiastic place that cynical old Europe can never be. Many young Europeans blame Mr. Bush for making America, since 9/11, into a strange new land that exports fear more than hope, and has become dark and brooding - a place whose greeting to visitors has gone from "Give me your tired, your poor" to "Give me your fingerprints."

In Arab countries, they have a word for what American is becoming, a "mukhabarat" state, a 'security' state. In most Arab countries, the undemocratic regime, whether pro- or anti-US is propped up by a dizzying network of secret and not-so-secret security measures and forces designed to keep the regime in power. The greatness of the American experiment was creating a government dependant on its people. This vulnerability was certainly exploited - witness the Civil War - but it made America a nation far ahead of its time.

Now, in the cowardly days of post-911, we are shrinking back in fear, abandoning milestones of freedom as we go. We have not gone far, but we are steadily insulating our government. One day we will wake up and find that we cannot stop the monster we have created. When the United States becomes stronger than America, it will for all intents and purposes cease to be the great U.S.A. that generations around the world had come to know and love.