Posted on 09/15/2025 3:37:19 AM PDT by EBH
The Day the Fears Came Home
I still remember the weeks after 9/11. The air itself felt different — heavier, charged. We were grieving, yes, but we were also afraid. In those days, the Patriot Act swept through Congress, and most of us nodded along. We wanted to feel safe. We wanted to believe it would only be used against the men who had flown planes into towers.
But even then, a whisper lingered: What happens if these powers are ever turned inward?
We told ourselves it wouldn’t happen. That Americans wouldn’t call other Americans terrorists. That these tools were for al-Qaeda, not our neighbors. And for nearly 25 years, that uneasy whisper has followed me.
The Laws We Feared
The Patriot Act did more than fight foreign terror. It quietly rewrote definitions. “Domestic terrorism” was born on paper, even if rarely spoken out loud. The law lowered thresholds for surveillance. It opened the door for freezing bank accounts, monitoring phones and emails, prosecuting “material support.”
Definition: The USA PATRIOT Act (2001) amended federal law to expand the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism.
Specifically, 18 U.S. Code § 2331 defines domestic terrorism as acts that:
1. Involve dangerous acts to human life that violate federal or state law;
2. Appear intended to intimidate or coerce civilians, influence government policy by intimidation/coercion, or affect the conduct of government by mass destruction/assassination/kidnapping;
3. Occur primarily within U.S. territory.
Result: This means the government doesn’t just have a foreign-terrorism toolbox, it can apply terrorism designations to U.S. citizens if their actions fit those criteria.
Later, the NDAA of 2012 triggered a new round of debates; indefinite detention for citizens suspected of terrorism. Once again, we reassured ourselves: This is about them, not us.
The system, our justice system, remained slow by design. That slowness has always been both our flaw and our feature.
The Hybrid Coyote
For decades, we leaned on the “lone wolf” story. Every violent act was isolated, a troubled individual. That story kept the Patriot Act’s worst fears at bay. Lone wolves didn’t require the terrorism toolbox.
But that myth is gone. Charlie Kirk’s assassination shattered it. In any other country, we’d call it what it was: terrorism.
What we face now is a hybrid — a coyote slipping through the cracks. Not a foreign enemy, not a lone wolf. Something in-between. And our system, built for neat categories, doesn’t know how to catch it.
The Watchlists We Once Feared
Not long ago, Americans learned that the FBI had already been compiling quiet watchlists: “radical-traditional Catholics,” survivalist preppers, even parents at school board meetings. When those revelations surfaced, the response was outrage.
How dare they paint ordinary citizens as threats? How dare they use counterterrorism tools against Americans?
We shouted then, because it felt like the government was turning suspicion inward.
And yet here we are. With hearts hardening, with people losing jobs over their words, with assassination in the air, those same watchlists suddenly look less like dystopia and more like preparation.
That’s what chills me. What once horrified us may soon be tolerated — even welcomed. The coyote net was already built. The only question is whether we’ll now ask to use it.
Trump’s Word,
Last week, Trump used a word presidents have avoided for two decades. He essentially called them terrorists.
“This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today”
That wasn’t a slip. It was a calculated risk. A signal. A test.
Because once you name it, the drawer marked “Patriot Act” slides open. Inside are powers we always feared and perhaps, in this moment, the very powers people will welcome.
Trump wasn’t just naming one shooter. By tying Kirk’s death to “the terrorism we’re seeing in our country today,” he put an entire ecosystem on notice. It was less about a lone criminal and more about the climate that nurtures violence the rhetoric, the groups, the networks. In 2001, terrorism meant sleeper cells and foreign plots. In 2025, the word now stretches to include domestic ecosystems of politics, media, and culture. And once that circle is drawn, the machinery of counterterrorism doesn’t stop with an individual. It scans everything inside the circle.
The Paradox
This is the bind of 2025.
If the justice system stays slow, the hybrid coyote keeps slipping through, striking again. If the justice system pulls the terrorism lever, it gains speed but sacrifices restraint.
For almost 250 years, we’ve lived with that flaw and that feature. We tolerated the slowness because it kept tyranny at bay. But now, weary and hardened, the public may trade restraint for action.
The Day the Fears Came Home
In 2001, we feared the Patriot Act. In 2025, we may welcome it.
The whisper that haunted us after 9/11 has become a choice laid bare on the president’s desk. What we once swore would never be turned inward may now be the only tool left standing.
And the scariest part? We’ll tell ourselves it’s for our safety.
Sidebar: Whatever Happened to the Patriot Act Sunset?
When the Patriot Act was first passed in 2001, some of its most controversial provisions had “sunset” clauses. The promise was that these extraordinary powers would expire once the immediate crisis had passed.
But over the years, Congress kept extending them. In 2015, the USA Freedom Act rebranded and modified parts of the law, ending the bulk phone metadata program but leaving most surveillance tools intact. In 2020, a few provisions finally lapsed — like “roving” wiretaps and the “lone wolf” tracker clause — but the core of the Patriot Act had already become permanent law.
I know some will say I’m being too cautious at a time like this. But caution is what has kept our republic alive for nearly 250 years. The day we stop asking what these powers cost us is the day the hybrid coyote wins not with a bullet, but with our own surrender.
In other words, the sunset never truly came. The architecture of surveillance and expanded definitions of terrorism remained in place. The laws we once called temporary emergency measures are now part of the baseline.
Thanks, the one I put up yesterday was the leading edge.
The Day the Lone Wolf Myth Died
Free Republic Exclusive | 9/13/2025 | EBH
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4340208/posts
Probably be a few days before I do anything else. It is moving way too fast, but I anticipate this week and next will be wildly historic.
else. It is moving way too fast, but I anticipate this week and next will be wildly historic.
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I hope you’re right
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