Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 26, 1995 TAG: 9505260040
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-18 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
After the horror of Oklahoma City, no reasonable person can take issue with the need. We have met the enemy.
Still, it bothers, this concession to evil and violence. No longer will the president of the United States live in a house on a street - much as any citizen, if in grander style than most. It marks the end of an era.
On a larger scale, blocking off the White House is just another small, though starkly symbolic, step in violence's gradual erosion of our day-to-day freedoms.
The "capital F" Freedoms remain mostly intact, the Freedoms our leaders and opinion-shapers wave like flags whenever citizens are asked to defend the nation from threats internal or external: the freedoms of speech, press, religion, assembly, etc. But even these are at risk if Washington, for instance, responds to the Oklahoma bombing by substantially increasing the powers of law-enforcement authorities.
The "small f" freedoms, meanwhile, have been slipping away - almost imperceptibly, when considered individually - as technology has made it easier to live comfortably in isolation from one another, and the weakening of spiritual bonds connecting us in common humanity has made it risky not to.
Not that many years ago, being free meant a kid could get on a bike and ride off to explore the world beyond the visual range of parents, without causing alarm. It meant playing outdoors, away from prying adult eyes, well past dark on warm summer nights, and being dragged inside only in time for bath and bed. It meant walking alone to friends' houses, to the library, to the store, to school.
Adults could feel at ease heading to cars on dark parking lots, or sharing the sidewalk with someone on an otherwise deserted street. Windows were opened wide to cool night breezes, doors were opened to strangers without a second thought.
These things are not romanticized nostalgia. This was the way routine, daily life was. Dangers, of course, were always there. But the threat seldom seemed so real as to dictate simple decisions about where one felt free to go, and when.
The fear that has crept in through our windows and stands behind our locked doors is not without basis, though it is often and widely exaggerated - especially in very safe places like Roanoke and Western Virginia. We have lost at least some of the sense of safety that comes with feeling concern and respect for others - whom we may not even know, except as fellow human beings - and trusting that they will regard us in the same way.
So we seek security with alarms or fences or weapons, and keep to familiar, well-lit paths. And barricade our president behind decorative barriers. Still, the lone lunatic scales the fence around the White House, and we know there is no way to live risk-free.
by CNB