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Life is dangerous, and we all die. We can choose to face this truth with courage while taking reasonable steps to minimize risk, or cower in fear attempting to eliminate all risk. As a people, living on the whole in the safest time and place in human history, we have developed a distorted perspective that attempts to deny this fundamental truth of the risk of life and are attempting to eliminate all risk. In doing so, we threaten the very American way of life which gives us a unique and invaluable character: civil liberty and individual freedom.
As Ben Franklin put it "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
First, we should remind ourselves of a few facts:
While the effectiveness of the attack on the World Trade Center was appalling, with direct damages of approximately 3500 lives and $7 billion, most of the consequential damages we are inflicting on ourselves through an exaggerated response not reasonably related to the risk illustrated by the attack. These consequential damages are primarily in two areas: economic loss and restrictions on fundamental freedoms.
Self-imposed economic losses have two components, arising from actions taken without adequate evaluation of the actual risks and benefits. The first is additional private cost incurred. A Fortune magazine article recently estimated that our responses to the September 11 attack would cost $151 billion per year into the foreseeable future (or translated into political speak, $1.5 trillion over ten years). The second is unnecessary and essentially unproductive government expenditures. The current administration has proposed additional expenditures in the next fiscal year of approximately $20 billion to take actions, few of which would have any effect on lessening the already very small likelihood of a future attack, or mitigating such an attack's effect (the primary exceptions being additional funding for basic research and public heath resource preparedness for potential biological attacks, and cockpit and procedural aircraft security measures).
Second and more serious are restrictions on and violations of fundamental freedoms, both in the Fourth Amendment area of unreasonable searches and seizures, and in equality under the law. The most obvious example is in airport security. In addition to reasonable (and obviously effective—remember there were no hijackings in North America between 1991 and 2001) non-intrusive screening measures, random passengers are now by federal direction (and soon to be direct action) subject to comprehensive searches of their effects and person. These searches are not only without a judicial finding of probable cause as required by the Constitution, but follow the preliminary screening upon entry which indicates that there is no probable cause for a search.
Profiling simply enhances the cause for concern, because it transgresses against the American principle of equality under the law: individuals are selected for government enforcement action by virtue not of their individual action, but by virtue of their perceived membership (correctly or incorrectly) in a particular group.
As Edmund Burke noted "The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts." How long before the principle asserted in airports is expanded to include the area with ten miles of the national border, or to include all individuals with alleged ties to feared groups? We would do well to remember Thomas Paine's admonition that "He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself," and Alan K. Simpson's observation that "There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberties, only a long staircase where each step downward must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders." We must not tolerate the erosion of our fundamental freedoms in search for a false sense of security.
What should have been and should be done in response to September 11?
In the narrowest, direct action sense, take only those minimal, targeted, effective actions immediately necessary. Physically and procedurally securing the cockpit of aircraft makes sense. It is a minimal cost action that would have completely precluded the events of September 11. The historically demonstrated effectiveness of the general airport security system in North America (albeit with its flaws) indicates that no changes were necessary to that system, particularly when coupled with the fact that the changes that have been made would not have precluded the September 11 attack (does anyone really think that a determined paramilitary organization with government resources will not find a way to get weapons on an aircraft if it desires to do so?). Abandon the guards at airports (how long before we have an accidental shooting?), return our parking and pick-up near the terminals, let friends and family accompany travelers to the gates, abolish multiple, redundant identification verification, eliminate bottlenecks and waits, terminate random searches. Give up decorative actions indulging unrealistic fears and live with courage.
In the broader sense, we must both make clear that aggression against the United States will be met with a swift and overwhelming response, and vigorously wage peace. Where the aggressors are foreign, military action must be swift and assure the destruction of those who acted and those who supported them. Such a response must at the same time be coupled with substantial, comprehensive, and continuous efforts to relieve the conditions that give rise to politically motivated aggression, including foreign policies and economic assistance directed to improving living conditions, education, and fundamental freedoms.
Walter Wm. Hofheinz
2401 Turtle Creek Blvd.,
Dallas, Texas 75219
214.363.2400
walter@hofheinz2002.org
Paid for by the Walter Wm. Hofheinz for Congress Committee. ©2002
Walter Wm. Hofheinz.
Last modified November 29, 2009 10:54 am