In June I registered a creative work with the United States Copyright Office. Amid the submission instructions was a sentence in italics — "Please note that our mail service is severely disrupted" — followed by, in parentheses, a pointer to an explanation. Mail sent to an address on Capitol Hill, read the notice, undergoes screening that can take as long as a business week.
Three to five days? These pains bring one to ponder whence and whither. I went back five years, the detriment of anthrax in letters having long been out of mind. An associated memory from the time was of grumbling over the many burdensome searches in airports, each new complication intended to prevent the last clever trick pulled by a terrorist or other lunatic.
Traveling by airplane two months ago, I witnessed a dramatization of the argument in favor of profiling before the boarding gate. A man in his seventies was lifted from his wheelchair and bundled by two Transportation Security Administration workers through the metal-detection arch. There is a man or woman at the bureau, expecting disgrace if the one slipping past the checkpoint brings down a flight, who will maintain that if the elderly can lose their pension to a con man they can be a terrorist's dupe. But we still inquire, mostly seriously: Had the security department supposed a man of this age and infirmity might seize the steward's cart, roll up the aisle while bombarding the cockpit door with bags of peanuts, proclaiming himself the great-great-great grandson of King Philip's siege engine, Bad Neighbor?
Unless we find undisputed evidence that everyday people can be matriculated into a study of how to destroy innocents, hundreds or thousands at a time, arguments supporting the offensive removal of those already tenured in such clandestine schools remains valid. Our vulnerability is less of a lack of "security" than a count of the many openings attendant to living free. How many loopholes do we wish to close?