You seem to think terrorism is merely a passing inconvenience, perhaps even one that's already peaked, and I certainly hope you're right, but I think it's likely to be around for a long time...quite likely get worse, perhaps even far worse, ...
Quite the reverse. I think that terrorism is here to stay. We have, for a long time, considered ourselves immune from it; terrorism is what happens to other people in other places.
Now, all of a sudden, it's real, and we're scared #$!&.
We're so scared, in fact, that we have lost our collective minds. Now that we know terrorism is real, now that we've felt it hit us, we've gone crazy.
The United States of America has a two-century tradition of dealing with serious problems with courage and pride. We handled two World Wars stoically and with determination.
But now? Now we're acting like a bunch of frightened children. Now we are so scared, we are willing to sacrifice everything we've ever believed in to whoever promises to "protect" us. And that's sad, and sick.
...and although I hate intrusions into my freedom, I can't offer up any realistic suggestions for dealing with it otherwise.
That's the problem. That's the issue I keep trying to get the pro-surveillance folks to come to grips with.
Surveillance.
Does.
Not.
Make.
Us.
Safer.Surveillance does not make us safer. It does not stop terrorism.
The 9/11 hijackers were un an FBI watch list at the time of the attack. The Boston bombers were under ACTIVE surveillance at the time of their attack.Common sense says that if we listen to what everyone says, we can stop people from plotting to do bad things. That's incredibly emotionally reassuring. It comforts us.
But common sense is also what tells us the world is flat.
We need evidence-based measures, not platitudes and things that sound good. We need to try things, then step back and assess rationally, not emotionally, whether or not they work. We don't need people who are running surveillance to say "oh, yes, it totally works, but I refuse to tell you why or how."
We see, time after time after time after time, two things:
1. Massive surveillance leads to abuse. Always. Always. No exceptions, no matter how strong the laws against abuse are. There is no nation anywhere in the world, whether it's a democracy or a dictatorship, that has implemented sweeping surveillance without it being abused.
2. Massive surveillance does not stop terrorism. It doesn't, and people who think it does aren't paying attention. The Boston bombers were under active surveillance at the time of their attack.
Further, I think you're underestimating terrorism's impact: It's easy, even accurate, to say "Statistically, it's not going to happen to you," but unlike other threats, its effects are pervasive...when it happens to any American it happens to many Americans.
Oh, believe me, I'm not.
Terrorists want to make us afraid. And they succeed. In a very real sense, the war on terror is already over. We lost.
We aren't afraid of car crashes, but we are afraid of terrorists, because terrorists have manipulated our psyche. It's done. We lost. We're sacrificing our own values because we are such a terrified nation of ninnies now. We are so scared, we will do anything to make the fear go away.
Frightened people do not make good choices.
And I don't agree with your equating the anti-terrorism effort with the Japanese internment and the McCarthy witch-hunt; neither was a reaction to a demonstrated threat, while the current effort is, at the very least, a reaction to a demonstrated capacity for mindless carnage.
The threat is irrelevant. What matters is the fear. The McCarthy witch hunts, the Japanese internment camps, and the NSA surveillance have one thing in common: they happened when the nation went out of its mind with fear.
Frightened people do not make good choices.
