-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.rockfordinstitute.org/News/NewsTF092801.htm
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September 28, 2001
DON’T PANIC
by Thomas Fleming
“Don’t Panic.” This
injunction, printed on the cover of Douglas Adams’ imaginary
Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy, may be the best advice to give America in this
difficult
time. (The fact that it comes from
science fiction presents no problem: America is quickly turning into
a country only Philip K. Dick could have
invented.)
Panic is precisely the effect aimed at by the
terrorists. The object of terrorism, as
I have pointed out repeatedly, is not to kill individuals (in even
large
numbers) but to frighten and demoralize a nation and to intimidate
its
government. If their intention was to
create a national panic, the terrorists of September 11 are succeeding
admirably.
The most obvious and grotesque examples include: the stock
market panic, the gasoline profiteering, the loonies stocking up on survival
goods as if there something really serious like the Millennium Bug, and--worst of
all--the pop music requiems and memorials all around the country. The sight
of Bette Midler wailing and waddling in her black leather stretch-pants was
certainly enough to demoralize me. The
worst panic was displayed by the FAA. To compound its shameful record of refusing to
tighten airport security,
the FAA went into overdrive, shutting down national and international air
travel for virtually a week. Of course,
the week after September 11 is exactly the time when it was probably safest to
fly. This did not prevent the
bureaucrats from introducing entirely irrelevant safety procedures that would
not have prevented the September 11 hijackings, though they did have the effect
of frightening passengers.
I was at O’Hare on September 20, and everything seemed
fairly normal--except for the long lines and interminable waits. The same foul-balls
were checking in baggage
and screening travelers, the same lard-bellied security officers who couldn’t
keep order in a kindergarten were strolling nonchalantly through the terminals. They
did nail one terrorist,
though: an attractive blond businesswoman whom they were dragging, kicking and
screaming and cursing, through the international terminal. She must have forgotten to
check her nail
file.
Many American corporations have either cut back or
eliminated air travel for the duration of the crisis. In Milwaukee alone, Miller
Brewing and Harley Davidson suspended
business flights, apparently in response to the fears expressed by
spouses. These decisions might have a
devastating effect on Midwest Express, a superior airline headquartered at
Milwaukee’s Mitchell Field. A small
aside: the FAA panic also spoiled The Rockford Institute Convivium in Serbia
and Montenegro. If the FAA had simply
told the airlines they were not going to fly on the Friday after the 11th, they
would have saved many travelers (not just ours) a great deal of anxiety and
inconvenience. But, as they would say
in their defense, it’s their country, not ours.
The most alarming forms of panic that broke out in the first
week were the childish calls for immediate and “infinite” vengeance. The President’s
initial remarks were
anything but presidential, though as the days passed and he spoke with his more
pragmatic advisers, his statements increasingly bore the stamp of mature
statesmanship. The good news is that
the mouths-for-hire--foreign policy “experts” like Richard Perl and Paul
Wolfowitz, for example--seem to have gone so far out on a limb that there may
be no way of crawling back. The crisis
would seem also to have temporarily created solidarity between Secretary Powell
and the administration’s hawks, Cheney and Rumsfeld. While we have a right to remain
suspicious of their overall policy goals, we are fortunate in having a Vice President
and Defense Secretary
who are seasoned veterans of many an international crisis. With the Gore team in
office, the missiles
would have been flying last week.
On the home front, the administration’s record is less
encouraging. The Office of Homeland
Security would sound better in German or in the bureaucratic Russian affected
by Lenin’s disciples. The head of this
new agency takes his place beside the drug czars and energy czars whose very
titles constitute a warning label: Caution--these agencies are hazardous to the
constitution. Even the free-speech
junkies of the ACLU who defend the constitutional rights of strippers and pornographers
are walking cautiously. After all,
everyone including the Attorney General, is saying that this is no time to
worry about the law: It’s only order we want, and we shall have it one way or
another. I suppose we should not blame
the Attorney General for panicking. If
I shared John Ashcroft’s loopy pre-millennial theology, I might well be
thinking the end of the world was near.
I would say to the Attorney General and to his libertarian
critics, again, Don’t Panic. If the United
States behaves responsibly in the Middle East, we can probably avoid a serious
conflagration, and as for the civil liberties we are being deprived of, this
crisis is only the pretext for imposing the next round of more stringent internal
security measures that have been planned for years. When Clinton was elected, many
conservatives were afraid that he would move quickly to
silence dissent of the right. “Ironically,” it is a Republican administration that
wants to disencrypt our e-mail and penetrate our private
life. The imminent crackdown may partly
explain the encomia that are showered on George W. Bush by the leftist
media. NPR’s Daniel Schorr positively
adores the President, now that he has abandoned his suspicion of government.
On the eve of World War I, one of France’s greatest writers,
Charles Peguy, posed the question: What
should France do? The army was being
mobilized, new soldiers recruited, arms produced, defenses strengthened, but what
was left to be done? Nothing, Peguy
declared. Let the Germans mobilize public
opinion and turn their country into military-propaganda state. France had other
traditions, and if France,
in despair, were to imitate Prussian nationalist tactics, she would cease to be
France. America, if it means anything,
is a country that preserves some vestiges of a constitutional tradition that
gives its citizens due process and protects their liberties. If, in
our panic and despair, we finish the
job (begun by Cold War liberals) of creating a national security
state, there
will be no America left that is worth defending.
Copyright 2001, www.ChroniclesMagazine.org
928 N. Main St., Rockford, IL 61103
BACK TO CHRONICLES EXTRA!
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