One key component to the question of where we go from here may be: "Just who will be going along for the ride?"

No doubt we are at a crossroads in our history and culture. The financial crisis has struck so deeply our commerical - and social - institutions, capitalism itself could be settling in cinders on its own worldwide extinction layer. This nation is trapped in endless wars we can no longer comprehend or sanction. Our once-exclusive issues of immigration and civil rights are now universal, and few countries are so homogenous as to escape their profound political implications.

There must be change, everyone seems to agree on that. But who will reap the benefits of this brave new world - and who will be left behind? Who will be among the leadership elite, and who will be public enemies?

Who are tomorrow's undesireables? ...And who will adjudge them so?

 Last week in his New York Times' Freakonomics blog, Steven Dubner got a wild, and sometimes insightful, collection of answers to the question "Who Are the Outlaws?" Dubner's query quoted a University of Minnesota professor:

"Anyone who breaks rules is in some sense an outlaw, subject to social or legal sanctions if their outlawry is detected. These penalties operate on a sliding scale, depending on whether the outlaw smokes cigarettes or meth, pirates DVD's or ships, or violates college hate-speech codes or state hate-crime laws. But our standards for outlaws are relative, not absolute; they change over time and social space. Societies are constantly raising or lowering the bar, outlawing formerly accepted behaviors -- like smoking -- and legalizing former crimes, like lotteries. In any group, those with greater power tend to control the rule-making process. And they sometimes go to great lengths to make outlaws out of those who might threaten their power... Regardless of who holds power, societies operate with a basic set of rules that necessarily beget a basic set of rule violators."

The Freakonomics posters offered responses that mirrored our  long cultural romance with the outlaw image, unsurprisingly defining trendy societal outsiders in autobiographical terms: computer hackers, DUI offenders, "War on Drugs" casualties, etc. One contributor tagged "Jimmy" chimed in with, "When laws are outlawed, only outlaws will have laws. When marriage is outlawed, only outlaws will have in-laws."

The serious side of dealing with our social misfits is... what to do with them. Obviously, those with tendencies to harm others need to be kept away from those others - locked up. But with such loosey-goosey definitions of just what constitutes "outlawry", where are the lines drawn?

What would stop a government, in the midst of insurmountable crisis, from declaring criminal anyone expressing doubts about its emergency measures? A case could be made - if the crisis were indeed perilous enough - that such naysaying potentially subverts and corrodes means of aleviating extreme effects sparked by... say... a convulsive financial upheaval.
 
If history is the standard by which we weigh this question, then the answer is simple: "Nothing prevents a regime from jugging up anyone it sees fit." Dictatorships present and past declare as criminal any actions or behavior it determines to be threats. The United States itself has suspended its own Constitutional guarantees and rights in the name of national security - in the post-Revoluthionary period, the Civil War, and both world wars.

These gaps in the pursuit of happiness, especially more recent Constitutional abridgements like the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII, were seen prior to 9/11 as dark lapses in our history, stains on our national character. But the emergency mindset brought on by the terror attack seven years ago swept all that kiddie stuff away.

Downwind of the attacks on that September day, this country has instituted a worldwide gulag of secret prisons that engage torture as an interrogation aid, our intelligence apparatus routinely "disappears" people in "extraordinary rendition" abductions, some of the acts in our "war on terror" are swathed in security secrecy - which may, in fact, cloak despicable atrocity. Both presidential candidates talk about Osama bin Ladin being captured or killed; rarely do they employ the phrase, "brought to justice".

But that's "over there". What about here? How far are we prepared to go? ...If things get really bad?

Our sliding scale of just who and who is not a terrorist gets a going-over by Matthew Harwood in the Guardian, under a give-away headline "Criminalising Dissent":

"There's an old saying that circulates in more politically radical circles: 'Protest is patriotism.' In this post-September 11 world of paranoia and political expediency, however, protest, an essence of democracy, has morphed into something perfectly Orwellian: terrorism.

"Two recent events demonstrate how easy it is for the government to dilute words and their meanings to close off opposition and dissent. Last week, the Maryland state police disclosed that 53 nonviolent anti-war and anti-death penalty activists were tracked for 14 months in 2005 and 2006 under the state's terrorism surveillance programme, and that their names had been added to the state's and the National Security Agency's database."

Yesterday, the American Civil Liberties Union "...demanded information from the government about reports that an active military unit has been deployed inside the U.S. to help with "civil unrest" and "crowd control" - matters traditionally handled by civilian authorities. This deployment jeopardizes the longstanding separation between civilian and military government, and the public has a right to know where and why the unit has been deployed..."

Of vital concern to the ACLU is the partial redeployment of the Army's Third Infantry Division, up to this month on combat duty in the Mideast. According to the Army Times:

"Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT (Brigade Combat Team) will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

"...This new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

"After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.

...They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack."

Hmmm. Sounds like an active at-home tour for the unit, which will be based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. That part about the first time it's been handed a "dedicated assignment" on U.S. soil - and one that sounds permanent for the concept if not this particular division - is an eye-opener. Combat units, replete with attack copters, tanks - all the deathware so loved by infantile chickenhawks - are not common on American commons, although the Third saw some duty in the Gulf Coast catastrophe following Hurrican Katrina. And it seems our military is lending a helping hand to whoever may need it, like our friends in the European Union.

A few years ago, an almost $400-million contract landed by Kellogg-Brown-Root to build and maintain a new domestic detention facility got some play in the mainstream media because it was another no-bid contract ginned out to the Cheney-friendly company. But the alternative press took note of project itself, and this troublesome graf in the KBR release:

"The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities."

For anyone with even superficial knowledge of the geopolitical landscape of the 20th century, that phrase "support the rapid development of new programs" is a chillingly wide-open mission for a prison camp.