Joseph Ellis in a
Times piece this weekend, tells us
Here is my version of the top tier [of the list of threats to the survival of the Republic]: the War for Independence, where defeat meant no United States of America; the War of 1812, when the national capital was burned to the ground; the Civil War, which threatened the survival of the Union; World War II, which represented a totalitarian threat to democracy and capitalism; the cold war, most specifically the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which made nuclear annihilation a distinct possibility.
Sept. 11 does not rise to that level of threat because, while it places lives and lifestyles at risk, it does not threaten the survival of the American republic, even though the terrorists would like us to believe so.
Unless, of course, we choose to destroy ourselves in a blind panicked reaction to what amounts to a very slight risk.
More...
We take risks all the time, risks we willingly undergo in order to maintain our way of life. We drive, even though statistically you're
far more likely to die in a car crash than be killed by terrorism. We drink. We smoke. Both of those are way more responsible for deaths than terrorism. We eat red meat and do not exercise. Again, much more dangerous. We stand in slippery bathtubs on one foot while we wash the other one.
Very risky.
Although the risk of our being destroyed by terrorism is far smaller than almost any risky behavior we engage in, the country has turned itself inside out in response to it.
I submit that it is not fear of some existential threat to our way of life that's motivating us; it's an aggrieved sense of Americanism. We think we're the best in the world. No one can touch us. The Septmber 11 murderers came over here and slapped us in the face, and we just can't handle it. It may be that Rove is playing on fear, and that there is a healthy dose of it out there, but it's not a rational fear at all. I think at root we're just affronted.
And the worse part of it is that we're falling all over ourselves in a nonstop march to destroy that which the terrorists could not destroy, not even if they nuked a city.
Thus, we're gradually doing what the Semptember 11 attack could never have done, without our complicity: We're gradually unmaking this great experiment in self-governance. In a pissy, hissy fit of anger that someone could look at us and hate us enough to kill us, we're doing far more damage to America and what it stands for than anything, by several orders of magnitude, that they could have done.
We now engage in torture. We are in the process of turning the presidency into a despot by unravelling the checks and balances the Framers of the Constitution were so careful to make the very foundation of the government. We take from the poorest and those most at risk, and dump it into a giant, horrific boondoggle in the Middle East. We spy on Americans without warrant.
The administration has turned what should be a nuisance -- terrorism -- into a rationale for the the most egregious powergrab ever, and a cloak to hide the worst corruption in American history.
If things continue as they are now, the terrorists will have showed the world -- and the American people -- that this form of government cannot survive. It will not have died because of some external threat, but rather because we ourselves chose to destroy it rather than act like grownups and keep our heads.
To quote the immortal Pogo: We have met the enemy, and he is us.
(I have to teach this morning, but I'll be back to weather the barrage, I promise -- should anyone actually read this before it slips off the page into that electronic oblivion...)