Be alert. We need more lerts . . .

Saturday. Sofa. Coffee.

I drive a car that runs like a golf-cart at low speeds. All electric. It gets really impressive gas mileage. And it is quiet. Too quiet. A few days ago as I pulled up to my carport the phone vibrated. I stopped the car, answered the phone, and finished my conversation. Then I opened the car door, ready to scurry into the house. I had one foot on the ground and was half-way out of the car when it began to roll forward into the too-full-of-junk carport. Only nanoseconds before the thick plastic bumper connected with the side of the mini-fridge sitting on the simulated cedar round picnic table with a missing leg temporarily replaced by two terra cotta flower pots, I dove back into the cockpit, stomped on the brake, and averted an unnatural disaster. Then I actually turned the car off. It had been so quiet when I got off the phone I thought it wasn't running.

Because the car runs so quietly at low speeds, the manufacturer felt compelled to provide an annoying safety feature. When in reverse gear a warning beep begins to remind the driver and his annoyed passengers that the car is on and moving backward. As you go backward it beeps and beeps and beeps until the backward motion ceases.

The annoying alert is a great idea. It is so easy to go backward without being aware.

Peter King, a U. S. Congressman, is advocating the legalization of ethnic profiling as a legitimate means of law enforcement, and specifically, investigation of terrorist activity. This position is obviously in response to the failed terrorist bomb attempt in Detroit on Christmas Day.

Maybe I make too much of this. Maybe it is just a matter of semantics. Truly, most investigations result in a profile of the perpetrator. The more specific the profile, the better. That is an acceptable, in fact, desirable law enforcement technique. For instance, if a witness says the perpetrator was a tall, white male with a scar on his face who was last seen driving a van from the Full Gospel Double Portion Second Baptist Church of the Revival, then the investigators should round up all male Baptists over six feet tall and hold them for questioning right? Maybe throw in those women who are particularly sturdy just to cover all the bases.

Silly? You are right. Because in the above scenario the investigation is being done after a crime has been committed and a perpetrator has been seen by witnesses. The ethnic profiling being proposed by King and others would occur before any crime has been committed. It would assume that a certain ethnic or religious group, even those who are U. S. citizens, would no longer be presumed to be innocent. No big deal if you are innocent, right?

Congressman King, and millions of others, perhaps many of you who read this blog, believe that if one is of a particular religion, nationality, or ethnic group, he or she should automatically be under suspicion and watched carefully, perhaps even prevented from travelling from place to place, before any crime has been committed.

As I write this I am struck how reasonable this position sounds. Surely it is far more desirable to investigate terrorist activity in an effort to prevent attacks rather than explain them after the fact.

That sounds reasonable because it is. Law enforcement and intelligence communities should investigate the environments, conditions and associations which evidence leads them toward.

What is not reasonable is assuming that a terrorist is going to be of a certain age, sex, nationality, skin color, or professed religion. Such an assumption could unnecessarily take an investigation down a dead-end, wasting precious time.

Or more importantly, it is unreasonable to assume that a person of a particular religion, ethnicity, or nationality is guilty, or more likely to be guilty, based simply on those factors. Such an assumption takes us backward. Backward to Germany or Scottsboro in the 1930's. Backward to thousands of times and places where fear has spawned prejudice and bigotry and threatened freedom and civilization far more than the original object of the fear. Backward quietly, with no alarms or alerts. Or if there are any, they are drowned out by the background melodies of national anthems and onward christian soldiers.

So be alert.

Be an alert.

Even if it seems to annoy. It's better than running backward into the trashcan and spilling it out again. It is tiresome haveing to pick up the same old trash over and over.

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