Word that Attorney General John Ashcroft has sicced already thinly stretched counter-terror forces of the FBI on protesters planning for peaceful protest against the Republicans and the Bush administration during the Republican National Convention shows how far this nation has gone down the road to thought police and the undermining of the basic freedoms on which the country was founded.

I got personal lesson about how deeply the fear of dissent has permeated society when I went to my local library in Upper Dublin with a copy of my new book "This Can’t Be Happening!" in hand, to offer to do a signing and discussion for interested local residents.

The librarian took my book and said she’d be in touch.

A day later, I got an email from her saying, "As a local author with a timely subject, this program would be appropriate. However, as a library, we must retain our neutral position on all subjects, and we are concerned that a discussion of topics that people feel so passionately about could quickly become inflammatory. Therefore, I was wondering if you could provide me with the contact information for two or three of the libraries at which you've spoken previously."

As of now, I'm not sure whether the library will decide to host a session on the book or not. Hopefully they’ll buck up, remember the First Amendment, and go ahead, but the nervousness being expressed already is disturbing enough.

The idea that a library would be anxious about presenting a talk by an author of a politically controversial book simply boggles the mind.

It makes you wonder how libraries would have responded back in 1777 or 1778 to an offer by Tom Paine to give a reading from his book "Common Sense," or an offer by Thomas Jefferson to give a reading of the "Declaration of Independence."

For the rest of this column, please go (at no charge) to This Can't Be Happening! .