Be afraid, friends: Chicken Little says the sky is falling somewhere

By David McElroy · August 5, 2013

For several days now, the U.S. government has been doing its best Chicken Little impersonation — even though we still don’t know exactly where the sky is falling or how it’s supposed to be a big deal.

ABC News quotes a source who says the government doesn’t know an “exact target” for an attack, but then the source admits to not having a clue: “We do not know whether they mean an embassy, an airbase, an aircraft, trains,” the source said.

In other words, the sky is falling, but we have no idea what we’re warning people about. Or where it might happened. Or what might happen.

U.S. senators and congressmen sounded grim but vague when they made the rounds of television talk shows on Sunday. U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said the danger is “the most serious threat that I’ve seen in the last several years.” Rep. Michael T. McCaul (R-Texas) said, “And I must say this is probably one of the most specific and credible threats I’ve seen perhaps since 9/11. And that’s why everybody is taking this so seriously.”

U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) told Fox News that U.S. intelligence agencies have discovered a “very specific” threat because of “chatter” from phone conversations, computers, websites and other communication channels.

So if the government knows about a “very specific” threat, why doesn’t anyone know where it’s supposed to happen or what the attack is? Does the government define the word “specific” in a very different way than the rest of us do?

I’m not going to be cynical enough to say that there’s absolutely nothing going on and that the warnings are designed to create panic and a feeling that people need a powerful government to protect them, but I do think that’s the effect of such vague warnings, whether it’s intended or not.

The warnings are useless. If someone says that unnamed bad people are planning to do some bad thing at some unknown location at some unknown time — and doesn’t know whether it’s a building, plane, train or whatever that’s to be attacked — how is that a real warning? How is that anything other than scaremongering?

Of course, no Washington event — no matter how vague — can happen without being turned into partisan wrangling. Neoconservative Bill Kristol, for instance, used the warning as an excuse to attack the Obama administration, saying, “A year ago, the president said al-Qaida is on the run. And now we seem to be on the run.”

Government apologists are using the warning to bolster their case for the NSA snooping that has had some of us so concerned recently. We’re being told that without the NSA’s ability to spy on phone and computer communications, we wouldn’t have this “important” warning.

Where does this leave us? We’ve heard a lot of dire warnings in the last few days, but do we know anything that would allow anyone to avoid any specific threat? Not that I know of. Do we know in which city an attack might occur? No. Do we know whether the alleged attack is on a building or a plane or a bridge or a hotdog stand? No, we don’t. Is there anything you can do differently because of these vague warnings? Other than stay indoors and hide in a closet, not really.

What do we know? As far as I can tell, nothing. We just know that the alleged bad guys have been having a lot of “chatter.”

So it appears that we have given up our rights to government snoops in exchange for Chicken Little to go on television and vaguely wave his arms in the air and say, “Watch out! The sky might be falling!”

If Chicken Little keeps warning that something might happen, one day he’ll be right — and then politicians, bureaucrats, commentators and TV talking heads will all say, “See? We told you it was in your best interests to ignore the Fourth Amendment.”

And since most people seem to support the spying on our communications, there seems to be little the rest of us can do about it. I suspect that the people who founded this country would be shocked at how intrusive and all-powerful the government has become — and I think they’d be shocked by most people’s approval of the erosion of individual liberty.

Share on Social Networks

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Related Posts