We're told to be on the lookout for terrorists -- and it was an alert street vendor who noticed the bomber's car in Times Square -- but we must be alert as well to overreacting to our fears. The Clinton administration ordered the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, making it a parking lot for the Secret Service, and the ignominy of such a surrender was passively accepted as the price of life in Washington. So are the ugly barriers around such national icons as the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument.
The newest affront is the most symbolic. The Supreme Court itself ordered the front doors of that sunlit white marble monument to justice closed. Visitors now must use a side entrance, deprived of walking up the majestic 44 steps to the bronze doors under the promise, engraved in marble, of "Equal Justice Under the Law." The architectural metaphor for access to equal justice under the law is narrowed as a visitor enters on a lower level and mounts a dreary staircase, an exercise in political paranoia rather than pride in transparent justice.
A decade ago, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a shrill advocacy group, demanded that an image of Muhammad be erased from a marble frieze on the facade of the building, where it honored the prophet as one of the 18 lawgivers in the court's pantheon of justice. CAIR objected because the prophet was depicted with a sword. The court refused then, but surrenders to fear this time. Only two of the nine justices dissented from the court's scurrying to security behind new, bigger and uglier barriers.
Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg understand the significance of the closure. Taking note that no other court in the world has succumbed to fear, even when facing "security concerns equal to or greater than ours," they wrote that "the significance of the Court's front entrance extends beyond its design and function. To many members of the public, this Court's main entrance and front steps are not only a means to, but also a metaphor for, access to the Court itself."
I couldn't have said it better myself.