Saturday, December 4, 2010

Fear and Civil Liberties

Airport 'security' and it's intrusiveness and abuse of civil liberties reminds me of a Henry David Thoreau quote -  "Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it"  
Lets put this terrorist threat in perspective.
Your one year odds of dying in a car accident are about one out of 6500. Your lifetime odds of dying in a car accident are about one in 83.
Your one year odds of being struck and killed by lightning  - one in 6.2 million with a lifetime odds of one in 80,000.
Your odds for being killed by terrorists in a any given year - one in 30 million; lifetime odds of one in 400,000.
That is roughly the same risk as getting cancer from the full body x-ray scanners at airport security checkpoints.
Living in fear is exactly what the terrorists want. Doing so unnecessarily while relinquishing your civil liberties is what some in government want.
Millions have died in wars precisely to protect the civil liberties we now so causally relinquish for a false sense of security against exaggerated threats.
It is time to buck up, toughen up and get on with the business of living without giving into irrational fear and without giving up dignity, privacy and our basic civil liberties.

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