Orange Threat Level for Banks...What's That?

This afternoon, the Department of Homeland Security (or as it is more affectionately known, DHS) raised the threat level from yellow to orange for specific target areas in Washington, DC, New York City, and northern New Jersey (who knew?).

Now I ask you, one American to another, what does these cotton-pickin' colors mean, in all honesty? We've been at the yellow (or elevated) threat level for the better part of three years now. That means very little to me. I wonder what it would take to get us down to one of the other colors, like green? Maybe a global monopolization of all the world's nations by the United States. Of course, then we can be at the green threat level and live in More's utopian society.

After visiting the DHS' website, I discovered that yellow means "elevated." So yeah, that's a nice fancy word, but what does it mean for me as the "average American." Their definition of "elevated" basically requires us to become vigilantes. We should be watchful of our neighbors and neighborhoods to make sure they aren't engaged in illegal, or subversive, activities (such as being active in the Kerry-Edwards campaign).

Now this all might sound nice, like apple pie, but it reminds me of Nazi Germany. In Germany during the 1930s and 1940s, Hitler's ever-loveable Gestapo (gestalt staats-polizie), whom even Hitler feared, and the SS (Schuetzstaffel) were loose and terrorizing the German people. These organizations, too, were built around intelligence gathering (deja vu) of the most secret type. Not only did they gather information, they single-handedly destroyed the lives of those that stood in their way, or they deemed as subversive to the Fatherland (i.e., Adolf Hitler). How on earth did we get to this? I know--because both of these Nazi organizations were created for the betterment of the German people. They served as a liason between the people and the highest levels of German government. They sought out plots to overthrow the Nazi regime and then those people were sent to concentration camps (sort of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba).

Now I'm not saying our King George is an Adolf Hitler-type (he doesn't have the intelligence really), but some of the ideas are sort of the same. Like the correlation between an ultra-secretative intelligence service (like the DHS) and the Gestapo and SS; all of which are/were dedicated to the security of the homeland!

Now with that said, I don't doubt that the DHS can serve as an honorable and useful governmental agency for our country. This agency, however, must not be allowed to step outside of constitutional and legal considerations. The minute one person begins to use it for their own ill-gain, then it is no longer a viable organization and it must not be allowed to succeed. Perhaps, this all sounds like a conspiracy theory, but maybe not. Who knows? Only time will tell. But the minute they come knocking my door down in the middle of the night for writing this post, then I will be avenged!