Lock & Key

[frissell@panix.com (Duncan Frissell)]

From Nat Hentoff's column in this week's Voice:

In 1952, A. J. Muste--in an essay, "Of Holy Disobedience"--spoke of Georges
Bernanos, the novelist, who refused to stay in France under the Nazis.  One
of the Bernanos passages quoted by Muste is not without contemporary relevance:

"The moment, perhaps, is not far off when it will seem...natural for us to
leave the front-door key in the lock at night so the police may enter, at
any hour of the day or night...."

(Remember the Bill Clinton-Henry Cisneros proposal last spring that people
who live in public housing projects should sign an agreement allowing the
police--without a warrant--to enter any time to seize drugs and
perpetrators?  Our wholly irrelevant attorney general, Janet Reno, did not
object.)