Prospect has run a solid piece about freedom and protecting ourselves from terrorism. Link. Excerpts:
Should we change our way of life to be more secure from terrorism? We already have. A wave of hijackings in the 1970s led to the worldwide installation of metal detectors in airports. Submitting to searches of our persons and our luggage required us to sacrifice some of our liberty, but it worked. The epidemic of hijackings ended. The 9/11 hijackers had to use box-cutters as weapons because guns would have been detected. Subsequent increases in airport security seem to have worked in preventing a repeat of 9/11.
It is illogical to point, as some libertarians do, to terrorist plots that succeeded as evidence that security measures are ineffective. The relevant fact is not the few terrorist acts that have occurred, but the many others that were deterred or thwarted. London's CCTV cameras, derided by many libertarians, may not have prevented the bombings, but they helped to identify the criminals.
Metal detectors at airports did not turn the US, Britain and similar liberal societies into police states. Neither will foolproof national identity cards and police cameras on every street corner. Technologies are not tyrannical; states are. Metternich used couriers to create a police state, and Stalin used telegrams and telephones. Liberal societies have managed to find a prudent balance between security and privacy in the past, and they can be counted on to do so in the future. . .
The argument that we should show our contempt for terrorists by refusing to adopt reasonable precautions is bravado. A homeowner whose house has been repeatedly burgled is not giving in to burglars when he installs a security system; he is keeping them out. The threat of terror is here to stay. It is only prudent to take measures that increase the chances of thwarting terrorists or, in the event that they fail, of minimising the damage that they can cause. If our way of life makes us vulnerable to terrorism then we need another way of life.
We do, however, take slight exception to this paragraph from the article:
Paradoxical as it may seem, a strong state is the precondition for individual liberty. We can go about our business unarmed only because we are confident that we are adequately protected by the government. In countries where government has crumbled or been smashed, like Afghanistan and Iraq, as in crime-ridden areas of otherwise civilised countries, life reverts to anarchy. People who are afraid to venture out of fortified homes are not free, whatever their abstract legal and political rights may be.
This paradox no doubt holds in the modern world, but we should ask: How did the Middle Ages escape that paradox? Medieval authority was de-centralized and the people had freedom (thinkers from Bertrand de Jouvenel to Thomas Woods describe medieval Europe as a libertarian civilization). How could this be?
We'd bet our last bottle of beer that the answer revolves around mediating institutions: those little platoons in society (neighborhood, parish, circles of friends, clubs, villages) that watched after one another and, without resort to state sanction, required norms of behavior from its denizens. Those platoons have been repeatedly smashed, starting with the French Revolution and proceeding through efforts by 20th-century jurists to eliminate local preferences in favor of abstract rights.
Call it a hunch, but we're pretty sure we're right about that. Readers interested in more might want to try Edmund Burke for an analysis of the beginning and Robert Nisbet for an analysis of the recent.
