Remembering Danny Lewin

Good. I'm sick of being bombarded with it.

I get it, I'm supposed to be scared about a single event that occurred 12 years ago and give up all my rights because of it. I don't need to have it screamed in my face all the time.

Look, it was a terrible event in our history. But, 1) it happened 12 years ago (yes, I was a working adult back then, I remember exactly what I was doing and mourned with the rest of the country), at some point you stop pouring salt in a wound, and 2) if anything, America's response to 9/11 has completely squandered any rightful outrage we had over it. Look at what happened in response to 9/11 -- everything is "terrorism", blanket spying on Americans, indefinite detention, war against "terrorism"?? -- and all I can say is that the terrorists achieved at least partially what they were going for. David Foster Wallace said it best:

...what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price? Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned about more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice—either of (a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious?

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-ask...