I’m not quite sure what to make of comments like yours, but I guess they come with the territory sometimes.

<rant>
You seem to have been serious about not arguing with me, since you didn’t present any arguments. Rather, you seem to be accusing me of being some sort of unpatriotic Star Wars fanboy. Despite your accusation, I am a patriot. I love my country and I love the United States Constitution which (combined with our status as a continental power, vast natural resources, and a historically innovative populace comprised almost 99% of immigrants) made the US great.

I would like to think that watching what the current administration has done to my proud country and Constitution would stir anyone at least to outrage, if not action. Obviously, though, I would be thinking wrong.

So do you think that the government should be scaring people, on the off chance that they didn’t scare themselves enough after 9/11? Are you implying that my lack of fear is driven by partisan posturing? Are you arguing that my loyalty to the U.S. Constitution as the pinnacle of our system of laws is somehow misguided?

Or did I somehow poke an unwelcome sharp corner on which you bashed your intellectual shin by merely pointing out the irony of “fighting terror with terror?”

Based on its behavior of the past five years, I do, in fact, believe that my government has secretive and malevolent intentions.

Consider the evidence:

• Denying that habeas corpus is even a right
• Domestic Spying
• Torture and Renditition
• “Free Speech Areas”
• Police militarization
• Katrina and New Orleans
• Obsessive government secrecy
• Utter disinterest in possible large-scale electronic voting fraud
• Rampant anti-intellectualism

These are a consistent pattern of behavior of a government with utter contempt for its citizenry. Any government which consistently acts outside the law and against the interests of those whom it governs should be feared by its people and replaced as soon as possible.

Getting back to terrorism, by way of comparison of actual risk, in 2005, over 43,000 Americans died in traffic accidents. That’s 12 times as many died on 9/11. Over 200,000 Americans have died in automobile accidents since 2001. Should we 60 times as scared of automobiles as we are of terrorism? Should we invade Detroit or Japan to stop them from using their weapons of automotive destruction against us? Why is our government not doing everything in its power to declare a “war on cars?”

Since you will apparently reject anything that I might say, you would perhaps be willing to read A False Sense of Insecurity, published by the Cato Institute. It provides a solid risk analysis of terrorism, including this fantastic quote:

Terrorists can be defeated simply by not
becoming terrified — that is, anything that enhances
fear effectively gives in to them.

</rant>