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Comment by cdavid | Hacker News Reader

What seems interesting to me as a European is that this type of reactions happened mostly in the US. Terror attacks have happened for a long time in Europe (red brigades, IRA, algerian terror cells, etc...), and the reaction has been quite different to say the least. Granted, the amount of damages has been different (nothing near 9/11 has ever happened on European soil), but I don't think that explains it.

This is even more incomprehensible to me because I have always considered American citizens to be more attached to civil liberties and individual freedom than most Europens.

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I have always considered American citizens to be more attached to civil liberties and individual freedom than most Europeans.

Perhaps, but still... it's complicated. Ask an Irish-American in the 1800s, a black American in 1840 or 1930, or a Japanese-American in 1944:

http://www.theworld.org/2010/02/19/actor-george-takei-rememb...

From the earliest days of the USA, it has taken a lot of fighting to keep the ideals alive in practice as well as on paper.

Ask a Jewish Frenchman in 1942, an Indian Briton in 1920, or 5th generation Korean immigrants to Japan today. America may have struggled to keep its ideals alive in practice, but at least it has such ideals. And it has been far more successful at living up to them than just about any other country in history. We should celebrate that even as we strive for further improvement (current anti-immigration sentiment in America is far too prevalent, for example).

Current anti-illegal-immigration sentiment is pretty prevalent. If there's actually a massive anti-immigrant sentiment I haven't really noticed it much. I do notice a lot of people trying their hardest to conflate the two, though.

If there's actually a massive anti-immigrant sentiment I haven't really noticed it much.

I've watched several highly-educated friends try to get green cards, jumping through hoops all the way.

The fact that emigrating to the USA has been deliberately engineered to be very difficult is a relatively polite, bureaucratic, impersonal form of anti-immigrant sentiment, but it is definitely real.

Well, there are a lot of people that think that we should prevent Chinese immigrants...

I don't disagree at all. American culture actually seems to be unusually good at resisting xenophobia.

But that skill was developed through practice.

Many of us in the US who are attached to civil liberties and individual freedom are taking notice.

From civil liberties to software patents, maybe Europe isn't what Rush Limbaugh says it is. Wonder of wonders.

I assume you didnt live in northern ireland in the 70s/80s, where stop and searches where normal way of life and where you could see British soldiers patrolling the streets daily

Events in Northern Ireland have killed approx 3600 in the last 40years - not too far off.

The timeframe probably makes the psychological impact different (over 40 years vs. in one day), though.

Yes two generations of train stations closed because of bomb scares, of weekly news reports of a new bomb blast.

"Different" means exactly that. I'm not downplaying it, just saying that it's not as easy to compare as saying that the number of deaths is similar.

Personally I think the lesson to be learned from Northern Ireland is to avoid demonizing terrorists - it really doesn't achieve anything. Try and understand what it motivating them and you might stand a chance of working things out.

Every culture that's experienced terrorism has different scars. The US was attacked using airliners; hence airliners are a target of paranoia. The IRA was fond of planting bombs in public trash cans ("rubbish bins" in the British vernacular); the British pull all the trash cans off the street and then invent a bomb-proof rubbish bin (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5051419.ece)

I think perhaps you don't appreciate the degree of erosion of civil liberties that has come with the reactions of most European governments to modern terrorism. Most European governments took measures more drastic than the US. The things that the police in Britain are allowed to do in the name of "fighting terrorism" are extreme, for example.

> The things that the police in Britain are allowed to do in the name of "fighting terrorism" are extreme, for example.

Can you give an example of something the British police can do that the American counterparts can't ?

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act (Especially as it relates to photographers: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-23/world/photography.protest...)

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