Here's the article from Reason you should read. Do that and come back.

Okay.

I've downloaded a PDF of the Cato Institute's take on "being terrorized" and why it sucks and isn't as bad as all that. I have not had a chance to read it yet, it's on the stack. However, I'm compelled to respond to this article.

First up, I agree that there's a lot more terror being spread around than there are terrorist acts actually happening. Now, why is this? Is this because the government is actually that good at preventing acts of terror? I have my doubts. While I'm sure there actually are a number of events that have been prevented by proaction, you'll forgive this borderline anarchist his suspicions. After all, government's number one goal is to self-perpetuate. And if that means making Mencken's hobgoblins jump about and dance, so be it. If that means taking bills meant for defense and porking the living shit out of them in order to benefit themselves, so be it. If that means the folks in Congress being able to act decisively on giving themselves raises and that's about it, then so be it.

So just because I'm a cynical bastard, that doesn't make me wrong.

And I'd like to point out that the government really is doing some silly shit in response to things. After all, that's what government does. A) Something must be done. 2) This is something. III) Therefore, it must be done. So trust me, I know the frustration of being hassled by the TSA.

So let's take this Reason article for what it is. It's trying to give us perspective, which is important. Richard Bach said we either use perspective, or lose perspective–so I'm all in favor.

However. This last line makes me wonder what Ronald Bailey, the author, is playing at.

"We ultimately vanquish terrorism when we refuse to be terrorized."

I see.

You know what this reminds me of? Bullies on buses. Anybody who's ever ridden anywhere on a school bus has gotten picked on in some form or another. Unless you were one of the Beautiful People, then you were respected. Me, I was a freak. Still am, actually. So I was a target. Myself, I remember a field trip (I believe it was a field trip) where a friend and I were being hassled by a guy sitting behind us. Hassled and picked on and poked and all the silly shit that elementary school bullies did.

I was convinced that if we just ignored him, he would go away. After all, they do it for attention, right?

Guess what? He didn't go away. He kept on and kept on and kept on. And I kept telling my friend to just ignore him. Just ignore him.

And after reading this article, I wonder: what he would have done if I had turned around and broken his fucking nose instead of just sitting there and taking it? I bet he would have left me the hell alone. And my friend. And thought twice about the next freak he decided to screw around with.

And yeah, I regret not having done that, in retrospect.

So while I applaud Bailey for trying to give us perspective, that last line makes me wonder: is he trying to say if we ignore the bullies in the seats behind us, they'll just go away? Well, that's all well and good, but in my experience, bullies will do one of two things. They'll either keep doing it, or they'll go do it to someone else. And all the perspective in the world isn't going to make you feel any better if an act of terror makes you a statistic. Do you think people dying thanks to car bombs think, "Well, damn, at least I'm being blown to bits comforted by the notion that there was only a one in 1300 chance of this happening over the course of my lifetime?"

So thanks for the perspective. But let's keep breaking fucking noses, shall we? Because that's how you ultimately vanquish bullies. And the people who use perspective like this to pooh-pooh everything the government's doing are going to be the first ones to start screaming bloody murder and blaming the government for not doing enough when the next bigass attack happens.