Abu Wabu

And as Andrew C. McCarthy observes, Americans don't like that. Not one bit.

I was talking to a friend the other day, trying to explain my melancholy over the country. Conversations like that tend to get a bit self-absorbed, but indulge me for a second. I said I couldn’t think of a better example than myself for relating the problem no one wants to face up to. A number of years ago, at some risk to myself and my family, I prosecuted savage jihadists who had made themselves enemies of the United States. I was lauded for doing so by the Clinton administration. Though I disagreed with that administration philosophically, and particularly with its conception of international terrorism as a crime problem, I praised the much-needed overhaul by which it put teeth in our counterterrorism laws. Our disagreement was over the best way to protect the country, not over the imperative that the country be protected. Our debate was the traditional Right-Left debate.

Moreover, as a New York lawyer who made no secret of having conservative views, I was a decided minority, even among my fellow prosecutors. But that only mattered in the occasional, friendly joust over a beer. Day to day, our politics had nothing to do with how we went about our jobs. At the office, I had friends across the ideological spectrum. Most of them were from the political left, but we liked and respected one another. The bond we shared, the sense that we were doing something good for the nation we all loved, was stronger than any ideological divisions.

Why does that matter now? Because, for the first time in our history, we have a president who would be much more comfortable sitting in a room with Bill Ayers than sitting in a room with me. We have a governing class that is too often comfortable with anti-American radicals, with rogue and dysfunctional governments that blame America for their problems, and with Muslim Brotherhood ideologues who abhor individual liberty, capitalism, freedom of conscience, and, in general, Western enlightenment. To this president and his government, I am the problem.

Americans who champion life, liberty, and limited government are not just the loyal opposition; they are deemed potential terrorists, and are derided with considerably more intensity than the actual terrorists. Arizona — for criminalizing criminal activity, for defending its sovereignty and protecting its citizens’ lives and property — is slandered as a human-rights violator.