One obnoxious aspect of the post 9/11 world is that we have lost site of this:

We must start to accept that 5% of the population at any given time is bonkers. There are no steps to be taken to stamp this out and no lessons to be learnt when a man with a beard boards a plane with an exploding dog.

Such wisdom seems to only ever find a home in the editorial pages of ‘elitist’ publications that dare to ask why the social and political climate is such that absolute safety is considered a reasonable demand.

The real tragedy is that this demand for absolute security becomes spit in the face of our fore bearers who fought and died for the freedoms of our society.  They viewed freedom as something worth fighting and dying for – not just freedom of religion, speech and thought, but also the freedom to be different, to take risks, live dangerously and actuate ones own life.

We have turned ‘liberty or death’ on its head and made it out to be “we will give up liberty if it makes us feel safer.”

via Times Online.