<story><title>The Irrationality of Giving Up This Much Liberty to Fight Terror</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-irrationality-of-giving-up-this-much-liberty-to-fight-terror/276695/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>DanielBMarkham</author><text>I completely agree that we&amp;#x27;ve overreacted, but I&amp;#x27;ve always rejected this argument, and here&amp;#x27;s why: Terrorism is not about numerical risk, it is about &lt;i&gt;public perception&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;That means that it plays in the same game as everything else in the PR world: politics, advertising, social signaling, and so forth. The last thing it has anything to do with is logic.&lt;p&gt;It would be great if we could tally up all the things that kill us and spend proportionally on those. It&amp;#x27;s the logical thing to do. Heart disease would come first, then cancer, and so on. But instead we spend and give attention to those things that the public perceives we should: AIDS research, nuclear war deterrence, terrorism.&lt;p&gt;And if you think about it, that&amp;#x27;s the way it ought to be. Spending and making laws are all about the consent of the governed, doing things they want. They&amp;#x27;re not about math or logic.&lt;p&gt;The problem here is that, with the Cold War over, the defense and intelligence industry saw 9-11 as a call to arms. They&amp;#x27;re going to go out and do things a good defense and intelligence industry should. And as Americans we have traditionally been forgiving of having our civil liberties temporarily trampled on during times of war.&lt;p&gt;But you can&amp;#x27;t have a war forever. A democracy cannot survive this. Instead of the natural overreaction to a war that always happened, we started creating permanent infrastructure to address all terrorism, forever. We&amp;#x27;re fighting a war with nobody to surrender, and no amount of spending or government monitoring will ever be enough.&lt;p&gt;The original laws around 9-11 were temporary, and for a very good reason. But somehow politics has gotten to the point where terrorism is the new third-rail: some national politicians might grandstand a bit, but nobody is going to do anything except for give the security state apparatus whatever it says it needs. Otherwise they&amp;#x27;d be thrown out of office. Public perception demands it.&lt;p&gt;Adding up numbers has nothing to do with it, unless you&amp;#x27;re using them to make some kind of &lt;i&gt;persuasive argument&lt;/i&gt;, and then we&amp;#x27;re right back to public perception and politics. You&amp;#x27;re in the same boat as those who asked for more cancer research instead of AIDS research. Different people, rightly, see things differently, and everybody deserves to be represented. We&amp;#x27;re running a country, not an insurance agency.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>belorn</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Spending and making laws are all about the consent of the governed.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Laws should be about the &lt;i&gt;informed&lt;/i&gt; consent of the governed. Security built on a lie is still a lie even if people feel more safe. During the first days of 9-11, the military sent personal down to the airport to reinforce peoples perception of safe travel. What they did not tell anyone at the time, was that the guns did not have any ammunition in them. Instead, the military were basically posing as an &amp;quot;armed force&amp;quot;, because having guns &lt;i&gt;with&lt;/i&gt; ammunition at airport would then actually create a security issue at the airports.&lt;p&gt;The security theater of the US feels somewhat like a doctor who has started to only give out placebos to his patients. If anyone feels better, sing praises, and if anyone get worse, give them more sugar pills. Soon, everyone start to get sick on the sugar alone, while the sugar pill manufacturer crave for more sick people.&lt;p&gt;The security theater from 9-11 has gone on long enough. People are not going to feel more safe from it, and will just get sicker on the solution.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Irrationality of Giving Up This Much Liberty to Fight Terror</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-irrationality-of-giving-up-this-much-liberty-to-fight-terror/276695/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>DanielBMarkham</author><text>I completely agree that we&amp;#x27;ve overreacted, but I&amp;#x27;ve always rejected this argument, and here&amp;#x27;s why: Terrorism is not about numerical risk, it is about &lt;i&gt;public perception&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;That means that it plays in the same game as everything else in the PR world: politics, advertising, social signaling, and so forth. The last thing it has anything to do with is logic.&lt;p&gt;It would be great if we could tally up all the things that kill us and spend proportionally on those. It&amp;#x27;s the logical thing to do. Heart disease would come first, then cancer, and so on. But instead we spend and give attention to those things that the public perceives we should: AIDS research, nuclear war deterrence, terrorism.&lt;p&gt;And if you think about it, that&amp;#x27;s the way it ought to be. Spending and making laws are all about the consent of the governed, doing things they want. They&amp;#x27;re not about math or logic.&lt;p&gt;The problem here is that, with the Cold War over, the defense and intelligence industry saw 9-11 as a call to arms. They&amp;#x27;re going to go out and do things a good defense and intelligence industry should. And as Americans we have traditionally been forgiving of having our civil liberties temporarily trampled on during times of war.&lt;p&gt;But you can&amp;#x27;t have a war forever. A democracy cannot survive this. Instead of the natural overreaction to a war that always happened, we started creating permanent infrastructure to address all terrorism, forever. We&amp;#x27;re fighting a war with nobody to surrender, and no amount of spending or government monitoring will ever be enough.&lt;p&gt;The original laws around 9-11 were temporary, and for a very good reason. But somehow politics has gotten to the point where terrorism is the new third-rail: some national politicians might grandstand a bit, but nobody is going to do anything except for give the security state apparatus whatever it says it needs. Otherwise they&amp;#x27;d be thrown out of office. Public perception demands it.&lt;p&gt;Adding up numbers has nothing to do with it, unless you&amp;#x27;re using them to make some kind of &lt;i&gt;persuasive argument&lt;/i&gt;, and then we&amp;#x27;re right back to public perception and politics. You&amp;#x27;re in the same boat as those who asked for more cancer research instead of AIDS research. Different people, rightly, see things differently, and everybody deserves to be represented. We&amp;#x27;re running a country, not an insurance agency.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kiba</author><text>&lt;i&gt;And if you think about it, that&amp;#x27;s the way it ought to be. Spending and making laws are all about the consent of the governed, doing things they want. They&amp;#x27;re not about math or logic.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Righhhhhhhhhhhhht.. Let throw out thinking, ethics, and morality just for some &amp;quot;heart&amp;quot;. No, this is not how humanity should conduct themselves. Emotion should be calibrated to logics and numbers, not the other way around.&lt;p&gt;If heart attacks and motor accidents isn&amp;#x27;t photogenic as terrorism, the response shouldn&amp;#x27;t be to cater to the terrorism fearing population, but making heart attacks and motor accidents photogenic.&lt;p&gt;Let do what we &lt;i&gt;really want&lt;/i&gt; rather than we &lt;i&gt;think we want&lt;/i&gt;. Know ourselves, and we will know that pursuing terrorists by losing our liberty should not be our future.</text></comment>