MSNBC is fomenting fear and paranoia by running articles about Europeans with Jihad training or some such. Alongside it are advertisements for articles on the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

It has been 7 long years since the attack on the WTC. The Patriot Act was supposed to root out terrorism, right? Well, it "seemed" to for a few months: the government turned up a person here or there that was from the Middle East here in America getting a pilot's license.

So they found a few scapegoats. Then didn't do anything else. We hadn't heard of anyone rooting out terrorism in our backyard anymore. In fact, the Patriot Act got backlash because people were--rightly so--saying it foments "witch hunts," a la the McCarthy Communist Trials. These Communist Trials only succeeded in hurting a lot of American people, not the least of whom were important in American science and business.

But now they want to say again, "Hey! We've got terrorism in our own neighborhood and it's none other than our neighbors!"

We wouldn't let them bully us into thinking every American around us was a terrorist. So instead of trying to convince us our own neighbors are terrorists, now they're trying to get us scared of the kids a block away.

Americans just spent two weeks in the thick of Communist China within a sea of wary, militant forces and came back unscathed. China is home to 1,330,044,605 people. The number of Europeans that have been accused of being terrorists--not practicing, mind you, but learning how--is about 5.

Do you know how much work it takes and how many people it requires to build a weapon of mass destruction? A weapon of mass destruction is a nuclear bomb. It takes miners, refineries, scientists, engineers, foundries, aeronautics companies, and more just to put it together. One person or five are not going to be able to produce even one weapon of mass destruction. One person or 5 are not going to be able to move the thing, much less trade it or ransom it.

Do I need to worry about my neighbor being a terrorist? No. Anybody downtown capable of carrying out terrorist intentions either have bigger fish to fry (profit) or are behind bars. The worst I deal with are the teen wannabes that wear their pants around their knees. Really, I don't see how tripping over your pants can strike fear into the hearts of one's fellow Americans.

Do you wonder why we never catch any crime syndicate leaders when we capture "terrorists?" Crime syndicates wouldn't engage in such blatant, visible terrorism that the news picks up on because It's bad for their business.

Remember that we have some pretty good natural defenses, geographically. Whereas everybody in Europe is squished together and has about 4 neighbors on every boundary, the United States has 2 neighbors: Canada and Mexico. Only. The other two borders are vast oceans. No other country has two oceans to guard it from outsiders. In the Cold War it was shown that any missles that were launched from Russia or the U.S.S.R. would have to fall within a narrow trajectory range such that Americans can protect that airspace with antiballistic missiles.

With these natural defenses, what do we have to worry about from other nations?

5 Germans? No.

Hundreds of millions of Canadians? Yes. Why? It's none other than my own government's fault for trying to take part of Canada and annex it to our country. We tried to take what was not ours, and consequently Canada hates us.

I don't blame them.

We have had relatively peaceful relationships with our two neighbors since we established the 50 states, and it is only the United States' fault if we try to stomp on our neighbors' toes. We lost the "54' 40" or fight" fight over the Oregon territory in 1846. Canada won that one, and we've been pretty well okay with it since. We shouldn't be trying to take it again.

Nobody respects a bully, and certainly not a bully who cries victim.