Freedom's Light Hidden Under A Security Blanket

Driving near such symbols of American democracy as the Capitol, the Library of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, I felt that the nation was being transformed before my eyes. I recalled snowy days in years past when my son and I would slide down the unshoveled steps of the Supreme Court. Try that now, and we'd both be in trouble.

Gone was access to the steps on the west side of the Capitol, where we used to ride bicycles and oblige tourists who wanted their photos taken with the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial in the background.

There was a time when that magnificent vista from the west side of the Capitol represented the nation's endless possibilities and the hopes and dreams of the American people. Now it's gone, cut off from view, just another blind spot in an ever shrinking concept of democracy.

While America sends soldiers off to fight and die for the freedom of others, here at home we are becoming Fortress America, where freedoms are being relinquished without thought or question.

The nation's greatest symbols of freedom and democracy are being protected -- or so it seems -- but in a way that has changed the meaning of the symbols.

Except for the dissent of a few freedom-loving residents of the District, there has been virtually no opposition to turning every monument to freedom and courage into a walled-in testament to fear. And if those symbols cease to represent the land of the free and home of the brave, who is going to care whether they stand or fall in the long run?

Indeed, reliance on ugly, intrusive and ineffective checkpoints suggests that some people have already ceased to care.

At one checkpoint near an entrance to the Capitol, I asked another officer how he could tell if someone was driving with a bomb. "If it doesn't feel right, it's probably not right," he told me.

The same could be said about what was happening to the nation's capital.

E-mail: milloyc@washpost.com