Librarians: our last line of defense?

Deroy Murdock on Patriot Act on National Review Online:
These dangerously naïve or clandestinely seditious librarians are beyond foolish. They potentially jeopardize the lives of American citizens.

Who are these dangerous people? Yes, that's right, he said librarians.

I really don't understand the conservative Republican's way of thinking. Wasn't this country founded in part on the idea of having personal freedoms? Doesn't that include the right to go to the library and do research without fear of being questioned by the police about it?

If you think about it, the 9/11 terrorists could have just as easily taken books out on the various topics. Or just read the books while at the library and never actually checked them out.

When I worked in the local library in high school, there were people who would show up in the morning, read all day, and the just go home - how would I have known if they were a terrorist? It's not like reading a specific type of book defines who you are, right?

Oh, wait - Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski's September 1995 manifesto, published in U.S. newspapers in exchange for his stopping his attacks, referred to L. Sprague De Camp's "The Ancient Engineer".

When NYPD detectives suspected Scottish occult poet Aleister Crowley may have inspired "Zodiac Killer" Heriberto Seda, a Queens grand jury granted them a subpoena on July 3, 1990, to see who requested Crowley's books from NYPL's Bryant Park headquarters

So apparently reading Scottish poetry and non-fiction about the history of engineering are now seditious acts?

Look, I'm not saying that I'm a fan of the people who like to make buildings blow up - quite the opposite - but how are we doing anything but making our lives miserable - one of the terrorists goals - if we restrict personal freedoms? Aren't these same freedoms one of the reasons that we are so hated? Our women walk the streets without burqa's. They get educated - hell, we treat them (for the most part - some men never learn) like equals. People are allowed to practice just about any religion they want. People can say almost anything they want to without fear of reprisal from the government - note I said almost anything. If we start taking away these rights, these freedoms, then we start to make our society start to be more like theirs - and then that means that they're starting to win. We can't let them - so stop being an idiot, get your head out of your ass, and realize that making the librarian keep track of who used which computer when isn't going to stop anyone from doing anything.