A friend and I took my 12 YO son to listen to Richard Clarke speak on the University of IL campus this evening.
More below the fold...
Though he didn't get to ask his question (he wanted to ask Clarke what he felt were Bush's real motivations for invading Iraq), my son did get his book signed. He was also asked to podcast the talk on our local
IMC website (he recorded the whole thing on his iPod). The kid is chuffed, to say the least.
The talk itself was fine. The lights kept going off, which is par for the course for an ancient physics building, I guess. Clarke basically explored some basic theses of his book, like how fundamentalist Islam operates, how a War on Terror is impossible, etc. The best-yet-scary part was toward the end, though, when he began talking about civil liberties, the Constitution, and our real enemies. I had planned on asking him about a short-yet-wowzer paragraph in the book's epilogue regarding our "enemies", but he pretty much answered it in his talk: the citizens of the US are fighting a two-pronged war, one against a small group of jihadists and the other against a government bent on taking away the Constitutional rights of a largely complacent population -- ours.
It was surreal. I don't have to tell you that sitting there in the audience with my wonderful, smart, interested kid next to me, listening to this guy WHO WOULD KNOW ABOUT SUCH THINGS say that if there's another attack on the US, PATRIOT I will look like a walk in the park, well... it sucked.
I'm glad we went, though; my son says he wants to be a journalist and political scientist. He's already making a difference, just by being at events like this and putting himself out there.
Score one for our side.