Have We Got More Brains Than A High Wind?

I apologize for the preachiness of what follows; I hadn't the time to go back and recast the essay in a more elegant tone (or even just coherently). But it's something I've been itching to say for several years, so, for good or worse, I'm letting fly:


I have seen often and in diverse contexts the assertion that terrorists are out to destroy our rights and liberty, but no one has claimed that hurricanes, tsunamis, tornados or earthquakes also threaten our rights and liberty, and this absence is puzzling, because the only difference between what a terrorist does and what bad weather does is that what the terrorist does is considerably less extreme, less destructive and less disruptive than what bad weather does. If a terrorist is capable of destroying our rights and liberty by demolishing a few structures and killing a number of people, certainly a hurricane the ferocity of Katrina, which demolished most of an entire city and killed hundreds of people, should have blown our rights and liberty halfway across the Gulf of Mexico and sunk them there. So far as I know, that didn’t happen.

Unless terrorists do something that bad weather doesn’t, our rights and liberty are safe from the worst of their puny depradations. No terrorist storms the halls of government and places himself and his minions into the seats of power. Only an invading army could do that. Some terrorists have blown up the halls of government, and assassinated government officers, but none have assumed the throne of power themselves. Explosions and murder are easy; so easy that something brainless and disorganized as bad weather can accomplish it. But gripping and holding onto power requires a mastery of forces that transcend mere violence, and no terrorist has ever demonstrated even recognition of such forces, let alone a willingness to accept the responsibilities that accompany them. So our rights and liberty have as much to fear from terrorists as from bad weather.

What our rights and liberty do have a great deal to fear is ourselves. We don’t dump our rights and liberty overboard when a hurricane swollen tsunami washes out a whole city, but we fall all over ourselves ditching rights and liberty like hot grenades if a terrorist blows up a building. One would think, watching us, that the loss of a single building meant more to us than the loss of an entire city.

One would wonder how we could possibly claim that we value rights and liberty when we can be so easily spooked into discarding them, and one couldn’t help but regard us as hopelessly neurotic when we claim that by discarding them we are protecting them.

We need to wise up. If our rights and liberty mean so much to us, we shouldn’t grant power of proxy to a terrorist to undo them: he does the easy job of razing an office building downtown, and we do the more difficult job for him of tossing out the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments. How smart is that, doing injury to ourselves for a terrorist that he’s powerless to do himself?

We need to wise up. A terrorist is less threat to us than the weather, and like bad weather, not worth even denting our rights and liberty over. They are precious beyond price. A terrorist isn’t worth the breath of air it takes to speak his name.

Should we look for terrorists? Sure, but not with such zeal we destroy what’s valuable in the process, and do more damage to ourselves than what a terrorist would have done if we failed to find him. Should finding them be our top priority? Well, what matters? If our lives and property are important, we should devote most of our efforts at protecting them from significant threats like bad weather, disease, urban decay, domestic violence, traffic fatalities, to name just a few of the problems that fear of terrorism has eclipsed. Terrorism is rare; weather, disease, urban decay, domestic violence and traffic fatalities afflict us every day.

Where do you think we should direct our ingenuity, our time, our energy?