The 2010 congressional campaign of Adam Kinzinger promoted its candidate with the slogan, “Adam Kinzinger runs towards trouble.” Now, residents of the 11th congressional district in Illinois are asking themselves whether that’s truly a quality that they want to see in a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Recent comments by Kinzinger on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives suggest that the new U.S. Representative may be addicted to trouble, hooked on the the thrill of fear that the United States is always on the verge of a deadly attack. Research indicates that the sensation of fear, processed by the amygdala in the brain, can bring some people a kind of pleasure that becomes difficult to turn away from. Speaking to his colleagues in Congress, Kinzinger encouraged them to indulge in this pleasure of terror. He said,

“I ask my colleagues to rise and join me. I ask my colleagues to ask themselves, which side do they want to be on? Do they want to be on the side that doesn’t necessarily understand and recognize that we are going to continue to be assaulted for generations from a group overseas that wants to destroy and harm our way of life?”

Kinzinger was asking Congress to stand on the side of fear junkies, people who are so attracted to the natural high that they receive from frightening stimulus that they begin to actually seek out terror – to run towards trouble. Kinzinger needs to feel fear so badly that he’s built up a fantasy knowledge of the future, in which believes that the United States is certain to be subject to terrorist attacks from Al Quaeda “for generations”.

Nobody can know the future with such certainty. We can, however, look at the recent past and at what’s happening in the present.

Kinzinger was speaking in support of the renewal, without any reform, of the surveillance powers of the Patriot Act. Those powers, used in conjunction with the powers created by the FISA Amendments Act, have enabled the federal government to establish a giant surveillance system beyond even the scope of what was imagined by George Orwell. That system has been used by the government to snoop on the private activities of millions of Americans – people who are certainly not the terrorists that Adam Kinzinger gets a thrill out of fearing.

Records show that the Patriot Act powers are almost never used for investigations that are related to terrorism – it’s other people besides suspected terrorists who are the typical targets of the Patriot Act. The government board that’s required by federal law to review the Patriot Act to ensure that it doesn’t violate our constitutional rights is not even in existence anymore. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that tens of thousands of violations of the law related to the Patriot Act have been discovered.

Adam Kinzinger asks us to believe that all these abuses under the Patriot Act, which is plainly in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, are justified because we must fear a devastating terrorist attack at any moment. If Representative Kinzinger needs the thrill that comes along with living in fear, it’s his right to pursue that terror as an individual. As a member of Congress, however, Kinzinger has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution, even in times of fear.

Help remind Congressman Kinzinger of his responsibilities. Join the protest this Saturday at noon outside the U.S. Capitol, demanding the repeal of the Patriot Act.