Security

I'm no fan of fear, but I am very willing to accept some if they reward is compensatory.

As Ben Franklin said "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

I can only hope that President Bush and his team keep this in mind when they consider whether they should continue to pro-actively chase terrorism and tyranny around the globe or whether they should shift to a strategy of appeasement in an attempt to reduce the number of bodybags arriving at Dover AFB. Clearly, the fine-feathered Spanish and the rest of the continentals did not. They want to run and hide. Trade freedom for security. Trade creativeness that spawns from diversity for xenophobia, trade liberty for constricting government interference, trade the pursuit of happiness for the shackles of fear.

Fighting isn't always the answer, they say. Surrender is never the answer say I. I've been developing a theory about those who favor appeasement. It goes something like this: they've not faced a tragedy like 9/11 in their own backyards, so they aren't willing to accept the high immediate costs of fighting against those who would perpetrate it. Talk is cheaper, so they stick to that. Once they come around to the realization that they are at as great a risk as the US is, they'll also come around to the realization that we all must act, and forcefully so. A few years from now, the UN should be the most belligerent club in NYC.

The problem with this theory is that they have faced tragedies like 9/11. Some have faced much worse. Muslim states have faced the utmost tragedy as a result of militant radical terrorists. Why aren't they ahead of the US in their desire to exercise this tumor from corpus humanitarius?

It's because they don't think they can win. Or at least, they don't think they can win within the limits of their attention span. Americans disagree. This isn't just wishful thinking. In the US, the future has always turned out to be brighter than the past. It has instilled an optimistic spirit which has been beaten out of most the rest of the world. We are willing to incur harsh immediate pain because we believe that it will be better on the other side and history hasn't let us down yet. We don't attribute this to luck; we see our history as proof that we have the ability to create our own destiny. We have the money. We have the minds. We have the might. Harsh but true, we are also successful at recruiting the best minds money and might from the rest of the world, leaving them with little hope of matching our success. Impotence raises fear. Fear breeds caution. Caution leads to paralysis. Paralysis causes atrophy. Atrophy feeds apathy. They've already lost the war.

The only way I can think of pulling them out of their downward spiral is to turn "them" into "us." If they begin to realize that we are all one people, living in a global society, enjoying common gains and suffering common losses, then they will begin to feel that we share common power.