The Endless Fear of Terrorism

Over at the NYTimes, John Tierney says we should expect an Endless Fear of Terrorism despite the fact that, as any sober-headed analysis suggests, the risk from terrorists is extremely small, and no greater than it has been in decades. A fair point, but by now pretty well-established. The more mysterious and difficult thing is why the culture of fear lingers, and what it is about in the first place. I think there are a number of dimensions to this, but over time, I've come to think the problem isn't with how we think about security but how we think about liberty. It is not so much a failure rationally to assess different threats - which is nonetheless a necessary step. It is more that we have a narrow conception of liberty, and a conception of liberty to which we are not all that strongly committed. That is probably one reason why it always seems like our freedom is under attack. It doesn't help that our political system reproduces the narrow horizons of the present (and here), and continues to define our liberties in terms of a base understanding of security. Lest we think that I'm speaking only of the right-wing in America, here is an article I wrote trying to demonstrate the politics of fear under-pinning the most popular left-wing ideology of the moment: environmentalism.