The eavesdropping the Bush administration claims will help defeat terrorism actually represents a victory for terrorist tactics.  While the Bush administration trumpets the military victories overseas, the terrorists can claim an ideological victory.  The 9/11 attacks shocked this nation into a reactionist stupor whose chief symptom is a willingness to believe the lies perpetrated by this administration.

I say that because the very act of spying on people in this nation without a warrant is an affront to the beliefs this nation was founded on.  This is why I say that the terrorists can claim an ideological victory over our beliefs, because of our willingness to set aside those beliefs when they are deemed restrictive by an overzealous and wantonly absolutist administration.

This war on terrorism is one that has to be fought on many fronts.  The military front is fought with guns, tanks, tactics, and so on.  The ideological battles are fought with ideas, beliefs and freedoms.  This war is really a war of ideas.  I believe that the terrorist's beliefs are warped and unmerited because their position, their ideas, are so weak that they have to resort to violence to have them be a part of the global ideological debate.

If our ideas are as strong as we claim them to be, then they should be able to withstand the assault of such inadequate beliefs.  But the present administration's actions only serve to show that our ideas, our beliefs, are not as paramount as we claim them to be.  If these rights we hold to be self-evident are absolute then why are we willing to set them aside in hopes of feeling a little safer?  I contend that setting those beliefs aside is more dangerous than anything any terrorist can ever do.  Because once we sell our beliefs out for specious security is the day we have laid the seeds of tyranny at our very doorsteps.  In that lies the irony of our war on terrorism.  That we are willing to relax our rights in order to defeat an enemy whose sole aim is to have those rights abolished and erased from the whole of human consciousness.  That we are willing to compromise our ideals in order to defeat an enemy whose ideals are based on malevolency and oppression shows weakness on our part.

The terrorist will only be defeated by the full exercise of our freedoms, not the contraction of those freedoms.  Expanding freedoms is the key to victory.  But to pay freedom lip service on the one hand, while conducting a clandestine campaign that circumvents that freedom on the other hand weakens our argument.  Compromising our freedoms is a victory for the terrorists, who seek to prohibit humanity from exercising those freedoms fully.

It's "award season" again, when Hollywood comes out and itself credit.  The 2006 Golden Globes were held last month.  I never watch the Golden Globes, though apparently they've become a bigger deal in the last few years.  I keep hearing that they're a good predictor for the Oscars in March.  I don't care either way since to me the awards ceremony is anticlimactic to the red carpet fashion show.  It's fun to compare the different fashions, at least for me it is.  Let's start off with the best dressed and work our way to the worst dressed.

Best: Teri Hatcher, Emmy Rossum, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney (above)

Toss-up: Camryn Manheim, Mandy Moore, Lisa Rinna (above)

Worst: Anne Hathaway, Catherine Deneuve, Alanis Morissette, Mariah Carey (above)