Thursday, July 14, 2005
New York, Washington, Iraq, and London
The question yesterday morning on C-Span's Washington Journal was "Do the bombings in London make you feel less safe?" I guess my answer would be "yes" in the short-term but "no" in the future.
It is obvious that some idiots will try and kill more Americans. But this does not mean that the so called "War on Terror" will go on forever. If you take the recent violence in Great Briton and add the growing insurgency in Iraq (kids being blown-up as U.S. soldiers distribute candy) it is easy to have a bleak view of what lies ahead.
But I think this view would be wrong. If you think back to recent history there were many who believed that Communism would take over the world and the only way to prevent this from happening was to challenge its spread militarily wherever its seeds were sprouting. But there were other, like Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand, who thought just the opposite.
They pointed out that Communism was a bankrupt system. It was doomed not because of errors in implementation or because of the people involved but because the theories upon which it is based are inconsistent with man's nature. So too with Islamic terrorism.
Any vision of society not based upon the ability of man to achieve happiness through his use of reason is headed for the intellectual junk yard.
Therefore, of course, we should continue to be vigilant in protecting Americans against violence from both foreign and domestic threats. And we may have to use our military to attack those who have or are planning on attacking us. But this will not go on forever. Eventually, those who have lost brothers or sisters or, as we have seen in London, sons who have been directly involved in terrorist activities will figure out that this way of life is unsustainable. It is then that they, like millions before them, will realize that freedom and liberty are the only paths to prosperity.
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