Comments on: Brian Jenkins on terror, liberty, and courage

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 20:34:22 +0000

“cowering under the kitchen table”
Yeah, for all we Americans bag on the English, they managed to stick it to the IRA by simply going on with their lives in the face of a constant threat.

By: Bruce Wilder

Bruce Wilder — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 16:59:32 +0000

“We cannot expect protection against all risk.”
It is not coincidental that the Bush Administration seems, at times, to want to repeal the Enlightenment.
Civilization depends on the ability of at least some people to come to grips with their own fragile mortality and competence, and still go ahead, and try, in a rational way, to make the world better. The alternative is ritualism and superstition — religion at its worst: literal witchhunts and ritual sacrifice, “strategies” founded not on realistic analysis, but on dramatic narratives.
An acknowledgment of the limits of human competence in the face of threats to life is the founding psychological step toward secular achievement. Those, who take that step, still divide politically, between progressives, who favor incremental progress by reform, and conservatives, who argue for the impotence of unintended consequences. Those, who refuse the limits of competence, become authoritarians or radicals: the authoritarians deny the inevitability of error and corruption among those invested with authority, while the radicals embrace rationalized ideals as a means to ignore the limits of knowledge and man’s perfectibility.
Bush in a mad grab at power, has pushed heavily on the fear button, and aroused a political atavism, transforming a conservative Party into an authoritarian Party. Authoritarianism now threatens the very foundation of constitutional Democracy.
A rhetoric from Democrats, which celebrated the courage to be rational, would be a good first step in righting our politics, and bringing sanity back to our politics.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 06:39:33 +0000

“The first reaction, of course, of Hezbollah and its supporters is, declare victory,” Bush said. “I guess I would have done the same thing if I were them, but sometimes it takes people a while to come to the sober realization of what forces create stability and which don’t.”
Priceless Bush quote
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060819/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_17

By: Fr33d0m

Fr33d0m — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 05:26:04 +0000

More to the point I think is “We are not a nation of victims cowering under the kitchen table.” Or restated as ‘We have been made into a nation of victims by Republicans and the administration’ or ‘Republicans want us to behave like…’
This is one of the major ways the administration’s response to 9/11 has actually paid Osama back for the attack that could otherwise have been reviled as overstepping.
Mr. Jenkins has been in the counter terror business for decades. I can remember reading his reports in the ’80s.