Freedom as propaganda

After Rudy Giuliani's speech Tuesday night, a PBS reporter on the convention floor asked a woman from Iowa 's delegation what she found effective about Giuliani's speech. Her first answer was a gloss over the oratorical greatness of the former mayor. Luckily, the reporter pushed deeper and asked what "specifically" did he say that struck her. Smiling and clapping in cadence with each word, she answered "Freedom, freedom, freedom!" Being from Newark, N.J., myself, a 10-minute PATH ride away from New York, what confounds me about this woman's, and many like her, response is how the issue of freedom (and thus terrorism since, as we all know, terrorists' pet peeve is American freedom) seems so much more urgent to those in the Midwest than it does to we who actually live on the borders and around the financial/governmental centers of the country. Why does it evoke a more maintained, zealous response to 9/11 in people who lost significantly less than we in the Northeast? As an African American whose documented history is dominated by a denial of rights, I care about freedom. But right now, the biggest threats to American freedom are not Islamic militants but our own institutions of media, commerce and governing. I don't worry about getting blown up on a subway as often as I do having a police officer deny me my freedom and rights while I'm driving on the highway. And if you think me paranoid, look into the numbers of black men wrongfully beaten or killed by police in Ohio since Sept. 11, 2001. Kyle G. Dargan
Graduate student