http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/opinion/the-price-of-fear.html?ref=opinion&_r=0The Price of Fear
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDNOV. 20, 2015
After the attacks in Paris, the world is again challenged by fear. With every bombing, beheading and mass shooting, the dread spreads, along with the urgency of defeating this nihilism.
But no less a challenge for the civilized world is the danger of self-inflicted injury. In the reaction and overreaction to terrorism comes the risk that society will lose its way.
History is replete with examples of the power of fear and ignorance, to which even the great can fall prey. Franklin Roosevelt calmed a nation in bleakest days of the Depression, but he also signed the executive order imprisoning tens of thousands of American citizens for the crime of Japanese ancestry.
In our time, disastrous things have been done in the name of safety: the invasion of Iraq, spawned by delusion and lies; the creation of an offshore fortress, sequestered from the Constitution, to lock up those perceived as threats, no matter the cost and injustice; an ever-expanding surveillance apparatus, to spy on the people, no matter the futility.
Al Qaeda and the Islamic State did not compel us to shackle ourselves to a security state, or to disgrace our values by vilifying and fearing refugees and immigrants.
This bitter truth is lost on the politicians now grasping for the Republican presidential nomination, whose guiding principle seems to be a crowd-pleasing strain of bullying cowardice. There is Donald Trump, who voiced his support for the registration of American Muslims. Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz think there is something proudly American about imposing a religious test on desperate refugees.
As for the members of the House, Democratic and Republican, who voted to effectively shut down the Syrian and Iraqi refugee program, and the governors who would somehow block Syrians from their borders — Americans should hope it’s just fearful ignorance that clouds their vision, and that in time it clears.
History will always be kinder to those who are resolute and brave. Like the Japanese-American soldiers of World War II, whose response to injustice was to fight overseas, defending democracy with their lives. Or the leaders today who have been calm in the crisis, willing to see and to say what the mob does not. People like the governor of Washington State, Jay Inslee, who has urged open doors for Syrian refugees, citing the Japanese-American internment as a disastrous precedent. “We regret that,” he said. “We regret that we succumbed to fear.”
Terrorist violence is terrifying, and it is natural to want to restore a shattered sense of safety. But the best way to do that has always been to draw upon our greatest ideals.
