Dealing with Muslims

The New Yorks Times this morning has a neat piece that discusses how different European countries are dealing with the terrorist threat. Link.

But at one point, the NYT mentions civil libertarians' concerns:

[T]hese groups ask: in clamping down on radicals, are democracies violating their own values and, in this sense, handing a kind of unintended victory to the terrorists?

We're tired of this lament.

First, it's foolish. If a father who is also a sincere pacifist rises from bed at night and beats a home intruder with a baseball bat in order to protect his family, is it a victory for the bloodied felon? Of course not. The felon's intent wasn't to get the father to compromise his pacifistic principles. It was to harm the man's family.

Likewise, the terrorists' goal isn't to get us to compromise our open society principles that encourage free speech, free press, freedom of association, and other freedoms. Their goal is to destroy the society entirely. If we must compromise our open society principles to beat them, it's not a victory for the Muslims.

Now, it is a defeat of sorts for us, just as it was a defeat of sorts for the pacifist with the baseball bat. But it's a necessary defeat. If our society doesn't survive, there is no "openness" at all. This is common sense, and only a person blinded by a warped and extreme notion of civil rights can't see it.

The best we can hope for is to preserve our principles, even if in practice a few are compromised. The pacifistic father might beat the felon but not kill him. In our case, we might tamp a few civil liberties, but not destroy them altogether.