Did citizens not have a right to be a danger to dangerous policies?

Yesterday, I spent all day in airports and on airplanes, and on the leg of my trip that took me from San Francisco to Detroit, I read for three-and-a-half hours without interruption. Sitting away from the window will do this to me. When I sit near the window, I can't help but gaze out because there's so much to see between SFO and MSN, though more dramatic going than returning: first fields stretched out like a great patchwork quilt, glittering rivers and friendly clusters of houses, then the plains, impossibly immense, and the hard-scrabble Badlands, foothills and snowy mountain ranges, salt flats and deserts, and then the Pacific nudges into the frame and after hours of land, land, land in all its forms, the eyes can't believe that the widening blue rim on the horizon can be more than a mirage, and--as the plane dips boldly--the Bay itself, crisscrossed with bridges with the delicate tenacity of spider webs.

I was reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, which I'd only read in spurts before. Despite my love for the author and the work, I've never given myself time to bond with the book the way I felt I should.

My seatmate on the plane, a retired professor of American history, watched me read with mild interest throughout the flight. When we landed in Detroit, he said, "I had no idea anyone could find Zinn so interesting." I detected a hint of political conservatism tinged with some bitterness--perhaps he wrote a book that found no such enthusiastic readers nor such lofty critical acclaim. But he revealed himself to be an otherwise agreeable conversationalist so perhaps I can forgive him the introduction he made. Sometimes, Howard Zinn uses commas where I wish he'd employ "ands," and I understand how that could grate someone. :-)