A Country I Could Fight For

Both Salon.com and Democracy Now! are making hay out of Bill O’Reilly’s latest comments trashing San Francisco’s vote to ban military recruiting at high schools and on college campuses (text from Salon):

“Hey, you know, if you want to ban military recruiting, fine, but I’m not going to give you another nickel of federal money. You know, if I’m the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, ‘Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you’re not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if al-Qaida comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.'”

When I heard this early today, I didn’t cringe at his invitation to al Qaeda to attack the place as Salon is doing, I instead asked myself: did O’Reilly just tacitly endorse secession? Because I’d be all for San Francisco becoming its own little city state. The gun ban is dumb, and too many in the city are too attached to socialism. But I really miss the place, and I’d gladly fight, in an instant, to defend its independence from Islamist revolutionaries or their neoconservative bretheren in Washington.

So, when can we raise the flag of free and independent San Francisco?

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3:26 pm on November 11, 2005