We can't have it both ways (originally published August 3, 2005)

This country was founded by a bunch of rebels. People who decided that they didn't like the way things were and were going to do something about it. They took power into their own hands, lead their people against an oppressor and voila, the United States of America was born. Since then we have lived in a culture of taking charge. This is all well and good but it has just occured to me, as I watched the preview for "V is for Vendetta," (starring my future bride Natlie Portman) that we want to have our cake and eat it too.
The main character, V, uses his masked identity to run fear through his totalitarian government of the future. He says, "You may destroy me but I am an idea and ideas cannot be broken." And this is something we believe in because we believe in freedom. We believe in freedom and the idea of it, it's our "inalienable right." But look at Al Qaeda. It has become an idea. It is no longer about one man, it is about an idea. We can destroy the men who follow this idea of Islamic Radicalism. But what could kill the idea behind them? If we are to answer that question we must ask it of ourselves. What could kill our ideas? What is it that holds us together, that makes us, as a whole, stronger than the sum of our parts? Because we would fight, or at least still say we would, for something worth dying for, as these suicide bombers do every day now in Iraq. I cannot believe that were it not reversed and there were a few "freedom warriors" out there in a world filled of Islamic fundamentalists that we would resort to no less than what this V character does in the movie, really what these terrorists to every day. Why? Because the playing fields are not level. Does it make their tactics unjust? I don't think it is a matter of just or unjust, it is a matter of the tools at hand. The only level playing field, the only fair fight is in the minds of both of our peoples. Our ideas vs. their ideas. What would stop us? What would convince us to change our minds? When we are able to not necessarily answer that question, but at least ask it, then we can ask it of these radicals and start our way to winning the real war, the war of ideas.