America creates its own terrors

Lost in the cacophony of military music, flying the red, white and blue and the patriotic rhetoric that marked the celebration of Independence Day and surrounds the war on terrorism is democracy's most wonderful and critical aspect: the right to dissent.

Since Sept. 11, it's as if we've been terrified, not only by the terrorists, but also by an American government that demands silent acquiescence to whatever it proposes to do as part of its vague and thus far ineffective "war on terrorism.