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This morning I was running late to a meeting so I had to catch a cab. I had been procrastinating in front of the television watching NBC’s coverage of the terrorist attacks that were averted by the British arrest of 20 plus terrorists. I opened the cab door and my cab driver appeared to be Muslim. Now I was racially profiling, I’ll admit it, but he had a long beard and an Arabic accent.

I sat in the cab feeling very sorry for this man. I doubt he was a terrorist. He was just a cab driver living in Chicago trying to earn a living. After this morning, and after every morning when the news headlines include the word jihadists, he must feel very vulnerable and scrutinized.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Wabash and Michigan," I said.

We then spoke at the same time.

"Did you hear what happened in England today?"

We both laughed at the simultaneous emergence of what was on our minds.

"It’s very bad," he said.

"Yes," I agreed.

"You know, one bad apple ruins it for everyone," he said.

I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what to say. There really wasn’t anything else to say. He dropped me off and I gave him $10 and emerged from the cab admiring the tall buildings downtown. I wondered if my friend who works in the Sears Tower went to work today.

Several hours later I sat on my bed watching Fox News. I couldn’t believe the anti-Muslim sentiment spewed like bile from Bill O’Reilly’s mouth. Tonight he actually said "When one Muhammed is with an Abdullah…" He also criticized Senator Ted Kennedy for saying the America is hated more after 9/11 than before. Mr. O’Reilly is pro curbing civil liberties and accuses "liberals" which he says as if it is the "F-bomb" of being unpatriotic.

Why is it unpatriotic to want the U.S. Constitution’s fourth and six amendments followed? Why is it unpatriotic to want the United States to adhere to the tenants of the Geneva Conventions? Why is it unpatriotic to insist that the President of the United States follows the laws that he is charged to execute? Why is it unpatriotic to say that the War on Terrorism could have been fought better had we not been distracted by a disastrous war in Iraq?

What happened today in Great Britain today is scary. I have no doubt that there are Islamists plotting a horrible act somewhere as we speak. However, we cannot deal with those enemies by tearing up the Constitution. Not trying the prisoners at Guantanamo, not getting a warrant by a special judge to tap phone lines, ignoring these protections is no solution to ridding the world of terrorism.

This 1984 culture is actually harming the terrorism war effort. Had opposition to the war in Iraq not been silenced, more resources might have been allotted to finding terrorists in our own country and abroad. Had we not already spent more than $300,000,000,000 on creating a civil war in the Middle East, perhaps we could have found other ways to influence the Muslim center through fostering economic growth and supporting liberalized education in regions which breed extremists.

I can’t help but hope that my cab driver isn’t watching Fox News tonight where anchors and pundits tell him that he, because of his religious beliefs, is the bad apple that the government must protect us from via the Patriot Act. We need him to help us is this war on terror. What we don’t need is to demonize him. And I hope that tomorrow, when he goes to his mosque to celebrate the Muslim Sabbath, that his Imam condemns the men who planned to blow up the airplanes over the Atlantic Ocean. I hope last week the Imam called the man who killed innocents at the Seattle JCC a heretic.

And I hope we can find a way to uphold our democratic values while protecting the lives of those of us who love freedom.

Comments please…