One of the most distressing characteristics of our liberal friends is that they would rather believe propaganda than believe the evidence of their own senses. For instance, the television will tell them that America is running out of room to put its garbage, they'll drive all over the place without ever seeing a landfill, and they'll still believe that we are running out of room to put our garbage.

It is true that here in Austin, Texas the county dump is visible from Highway 290. Of course, the part nearest the road has been covered over and turned into a flea market, which is so popular on a Saturday afternoon that it causes traffic jams. No telling what the rest of it will become. Perhaps an amusement park or race track, but you can be sure that liberals will still be worried about where we'll put all our garbage, and they will still be proud of themselves for taking part in recycling programs that are so inefficient that they do more harm to the environment than good.

Instead of putting a little more trash under the future amusement park or race track, these programs put more trucks on our crowded roads and more pollution in the air and pay more for foreign oil, just to solve a problem that does not exist—and that anyone can see with his own eyes does not exist. People even use plastic containers, which have to come from somewhere and end up somewhere, to collect their excess plastic.

America is rich enough to waste money on these phony recycling programs, and the worst they do is to make people think that they are doing something for the environment when they are not.

The liberal complaint that President Bush is turning the United States into a police state is equally irrational but a lot more destructive.

Much effort has been expended demonstrating the legality of NSA eavesdropping, and much more effort expended on frightening people about it. Exposing the deceit of the New York Times is useful and necessary, but one does not have to follow the argument closely to see the absurdity of the police state charge, which makes as much sense as the similarly cacophonous claim that liberals give voice to the voiceless. How can the voiceless be voiceless when they're almost all we can hear?

Where are the police in this police state? Wouldn't they be everywhere? Instead, they are as ubiquitous as sanitary landfills and taciturn liberals. Most people see them only when driving past as they ticket speeders or direct traffic around wrecks. Nonetheless, there are tens of millions of Americans who believe that we live in a police state.

In large part, I blame librarians, who have convinced many of their patrons that George Bush is going to find out that they have checked out The Power of Myth or The Da Vinci Code. For years they have expected to be shipped off to concentration camps any minute now, and for years they have gone on reading Bill Moyers and Garrison Keillor with no more than self—inflicted punishment.

My favorite example of the absurdity of police state paranoia is the absurd story of Linda Evans and Marilyn Buck, terrorists since the late sixties. Some of the story of Linda Evans can be found in an article by David Horowitz in FrontPage Magazine, which tells, among other things, of her release from prison by Bill Clinton when he pardoned Marc Rich.

Marilyn Buck was the so—called "quartermaster" of the terrorist Weathermen and on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. She returned to Austin in the seventies and lived in a house she shared with the charmed Ms. Evans, who probably outranked her in the Weatherman hierarchy, but who had been released when charges against her were "thrown out on a technicality because the wiretaps that had identified her had been unauthorized," according to Horowitz, or "because of government misconduct while collecting evidence using illegal wiretaps," as the Prison Activist Resource Center puts it.

Kirkpatrick Sale gives a somewhat different account in SDS, saying that charges were dropped in order not to reveal intelligence information vital to the national security of the United States, Evans having been a guest of the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.

So Marilyn Buck was a fugitive, and not just any fugitive, but one of the ten—most—wanted fugitives, and she lives in her home town with a known terrorist, and what does the terrorist do? When she is not committing acts of terrorism, she spends her days protesting the police!

Here is how the Prison Activist Resource Center describes the lifestyle of the roommate of one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted:

Linda later became active in a political guerrilla street theater group, an all woman's political band and a political women's printing and graphics collective in Texas. While active in the lesbian and women's communities, she organized support for Black and Chicano/Mexican grassroots organizations, fighting against the KKK, forced sterilization, and killer cops. Linda also fought racism/white supremacy and zionism as a member of the John Brown Anti—Klan Committee. She was also active in building solidarity for South African, Palestinian and Central American struggles for self—determination by organizing material aid for these national liberation struggles and to oppose U.S. intervention. She also organized support for Black/New Afrikan, Native and Puerto Rican PP/POW's.

Some time after this, Linda began working to develop clandestine resistance capable of conducting armed struggle as part of a multi—level overall revolutionary strategy. Linda was arrested on May 11, 1985 and charged with acquisition of weapons, ID, safe houses, finances, political and military training and actions to bring the war against U.S. imperialism home to America. Targets of these activities include the U.S. Capitol Building, National War College, Navy Yard Computer Center and Navy Yard Officers Club, Israeli Aircraft Industries, the FBI office and New York Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. She received a 40 year sentence, which was commuted by President Clinton January 20, 2001.

In English, "activities" here means procuring weapons for use in armored car heists, including one in which three people were murdered, and stealing dynamite for use in terrorist bombings.  Fighting "against the KKK" and "racism/white supremacy" means slandering the police as members of the Ku Klux Klan and calling Governor Mark White and President of the University of Texas William Cunningham "closet Klansmen." It also means killing black people.  

If this were a police state, don't you think that an officer whom Linda Evans had called a pig and a Klansman during the day would follow her home to Marilyn Buck in the evening? And if this were a police state, would the New York Times be revealing classified information with impunity? Would Senator Durbin liken our armed forces to genocidal monsters? Would Senator Kerry accuse our troops of terrorism? Would Howard Dean say that we are bound to lose the war in Iraq? If this were a police state, would liberals be allowed to call it a police state?

You would think that liberals could point to someone jailed for criticizing the war in Iraq or administration anti—terror policies. But, no, the police state is as metaphysical as garbage dumps that leave no room for anything else or liberals who sit quietly when someone else is speaking.

Jonathan David Carson, Ph.D., may be reached at jdc@makehasteslowly.com For more information, see his website.