Terrorism knows no borders
Holding on to U.S. values key in ISIS fight
People will do almost anything when they’re scared.
Three days after 129 people died in Paris at the hands of Islamic extremists, François Hollande asked for legislation that would give the government more power to conduct police raids without warrants. He also suggested a constitutional amendment that would allow authorities to combat threats without having to declare a state of emergency.
Donald Trump, a Republican while it suits him, quickly supplemented Hollande’s proposals with alarming plans to close mosques and create a national database of Muslims. Alarming to me, at least. To the 31 percent of Republican voters who continue to support Trump, however, these plans are necessary and even desirable to protect the United States from the threat of radical Islam.
Americans are afraid. The Paris attacks proved that the extremism of Islamic State is not limited to the Middle East, and the United States seems a likely target for future terrorist strikes. The American people crave safety, so they rally behind any proposition that seems to promote safety. After all, Japanese Americans were interned during World War II to protect the nation’s safety.
There is no bargain more Faustian than the exchange of one’s rights for safety. Fear causes people to run to their government and beg to be protected from the foe du jour: Nazis, communists, radical Muslims, and all the rest. They are willing to surrender some of their freedom so they can feel secure, and with every new enemy they surrender more.
I do not mean to say that radical Islam is not a grave threat to the United States. It is the greatest problem of our time, and if it is not obliterated it will destroy the capitalist, democratic and free civilization that began here in 1776. However, we can destroy our own free civilization if we allow the threat of attack to undermine our fundamental values: freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, no matter who is suspected; freedom of religion, no matter how the faith is perverted; and freedom of speech, no matter how odious, antithetical or foreign it appears. I, for one, would rather die at the hands of a terrorist than live in a police state.
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