Sunday, January 2, 2011

Fear and Civil Liberties - Letter to NYT

As the holiday crush at the airports is nearly upon us I’d like to offer food for thought.
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 any given year - one in 30 million; lifetime odds of one in 400,000.
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.

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