For the week of  Sept. 26 - Oct. 2, 2001

The tighter security in American life

Commentary by PAT MURPHY

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America’s fundamental rights of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence are being chipped away year by year.

Americans still enjoy the most abundant liberties of any people on the globe. But restrictions on personal movements have been increasing for several decades, and the attacks on New York and Washington will mean even tighter restrictions, perhaps some that raise constitutional questions.

However, until the Sept. 11 kamikaze attacks, most of the increased security measures have been for protection against homegrown hoodlums, not foreigners.

Small town America can thank its lucky stars that it’s not as affected as large cities and urban areas, where trappings of a fortress mentality are commonplace and spreading.

Consider the measures inspired by fear of American criminal conduct:

Metal detectors are everywhere — schools, airports, courts buildings, even the White House.

Big city taxis have bulletproof windows separating passengers and drivers.

Iron grates cover retail store windows in urban centers at night.

Armed police are on patrol at school campuses.

Office workers must wear badges and pass through security checkpoints en route to their workplaces.

Americans are the most heavily armed in the world, with handguns, rifles, shotguns, many with heavy former military weapons, mostly out of fear for personal safety at home.

Police are now armed with heavier military-type weapons to deal with street criminals, and police helicopters routinely overfly cities day and night on the look out for crime.

TV cameras mounted on major big city thoroughfares to monitor public movements are appearing in some U.S. cities.

After glancing over this landscape of spreading, tighter security controls over American life, one reasonably can ask whether society has criminals on the run or the opposite?

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Meanwhile, as the world prepares to battle extremists, Idaho’s estimable freshman Republican congressman, Butch Otter, has his own idea of "extremists" — environmentalists.

Otter is a devotee of a new Internet website, Green-Watch.com, which identifies such "extremists" as the highly-regarded Nature Conservancy, which acquires land for preservation, such as the Wood River Valley’s Silver Creek, often through such events as last week’s James Taylor fund-raising concert at River Run that raised more than $100,000.

Otter’s oddball view tends to raise questions about his limited ability to rise above the nonsensical and deal with serious issues.

However, Otter has the same instincts as his predecessor, Rep. Helen Chenoweth, whose cockeyed logic about the threatened extinction of salmon brought her to national attention: Chenoweth pooh-poohed such a shortage, saying plenty of salmon is in cans on grocery shelves.

Otter is well on his way to becoming a bumper sticker star like Chenoweth.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.