A Nation in the Grip of Psychosis

American myth has it that the U.S. is the "land of the free and the home of the brave."   That myth has been completely shredded over the last decade.  Americans have become not brave but fear-driven to the point where they've come to fear freedom itself.

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts asks whether America's fear of Muslims has caused the country to lose its mind:

We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of America's mind.

It was last seen last month in Oklahoma. There, voters gave emphatic approval to a measure outlawing the use of Sharia law -- a strict and often brutal interpretation of Islamic religious strictures -- in state courts. Sharia is not known to be a problem in Oklahoma, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the United States, something even the bill's backers concede. But, said the initiative's sponsor, then-Republican state Rep. Rex Duncan, why wait?

Of course, by that reasoning, one can also justify laws regulating time travel, flying cars and pink unicorns pooping in public parks. Should we assume Oklahoma legislators are hard at work on laws to restrict these and other nonexistent troubles?

Probably not. After all, unlike other purely fictional problems, the Sharia ``issue'' allows a demagogue to exploit a tender spot in the American psyche: Our growing fear of all things Muslim.

...Americans of German descent were bullied and beset during the First World War in a nation that found it necessary to rename sauerkraut ``Liberty Cabbage.'' Americans of Japanese descent were imprisoned during the Second World War, many of them losing their homes and livelihoods.

You'd think that sordid history would make us wary of entreatments to blindly castigate our fellow Americans. And you would be mistaken.

To his credit, President George W. Bush explicitly rejected the reflexive fear of all things Muslim in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. But to its discredit, his party nonetheless chose to embrace that fear, to exploit and campaign on it throughout the decade.

Here, now, is the result. We move through a perilous time that demands serious consideration of serious issues -- airline security, energy dependence, the radicalization of American citizens -- but we, profoundly unserious people that we are, fret instead about saving Oklahoma from Sharia law, solving a problem we do not and will not have.

Thoughtful people ought to be alarmed.

The goal of terrorism, you see, is not to make a nation bleed but to make it fear. Oklahoma's nonsensical law suggests our enemies have been successful in that.

One recalls how Bush stood beneath a banner that crowed of a victory against terrorism. But to the degree Oklahoma accurately reflects our national mindset, it is the terrorists who deserve to hoist that banner. America is scared stupid.

Why does it feel that Pitts' is a voice in the wilderness?