Mob rule?

            I said "much." I did not, and would not, say that every Muslim home and hovel burns with the hope of establishing the rule of the Koran (whatever that might mean) over the entire world. We should note with some appreciation that Muslim clerics were among those trying this weekend to break up mobs and send the members back home, and that some Muslims perceived in the mobs the presence of "outsiders," uninvited stirrers-up of trouble.

            The message of the mobs is all the same plain. That message, directed westward, is: Shut up! Do what we tell you!

            We thus have Middle Eastern mobs giving orders to Western governments about the liberties the West supposedly guarantees and the ways (assuming the West knows what's good for it!) those liberties are to be exercised. And not exercised.

            In the old gangland days, I believe they called it extortion and blackmail -- properties a million times uglier now, magnified by the power of the Middle Eastern gangs and their cronies everywhere, including Europe, to hit and hit hard. No warnings, no explanation, just the uncorked rage. And the crumbling of exploded buildings and the punishment of human flesh.

            All this, I say, while the Senate Judiciary Committee grills officials of the Bush administration about . about a plan to save American lives? Does the Senate have this thing right-side up, or doesn't it? You have to wonder as you watch foreign mobs campaign to bring to heel all violators of their own wishes and ideals.

            Who runs any nation -- the mob or the law? Always and everywhere, the question has titillated. Seldom is the answer totally clear: least of all at tortured moments like the present, when so much hangs on rational debate of questions rationally put.

            I don't believe I've ever seen our storehouse of rationality so depleted as at present. Well, maybe in the late 1960s. You know what happened then.