How did it get so bad?

This is a good reminder of the harshness of the times we now inhabit: the land of the free and the home of the brave (that's us) has gulags under wraps, ready for those who might try to reach our shores in large numbers in the event of catastrophe (political or otherwise). Link here to the Huffington Post's recall of some of the stuff behind the president's "tough talk" speech on Cuba the other day.

We must wonder and analyze more closely how we got to this position. And for starters, a large part of it is not directly attributable to the land of the free and the home of the brave. Osama Bin-Laden gets a lot of blame for working to maneuver us into a corner. But why did we free and brave people go to that corner?

Last week I saw the movie "Kingdom," set in a Saudi Arabia where Americans are under violent attack. At the end (stop reading here if you still may see the movie) the U.S. hero confides that he told a grieving friend earlier, to raise her morale, that we would kill them all. Cut to a Saudi mother and 10-year-old son: She asks him what his dying grandfather whispered to him, and it was, Don't worry, we will kill them all.

Though this is wildly simplified, it has a kernel of truth about our times. It was not like that 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. How did it get this way? Is there a way back that doesn't involve zillions of dead people?