[jimpeel]

http://www.boulderweekly.com/coverstory.html

Home of the not-so-brave

by Vince Darcangelo ( Editorial@boulderweekly.com )

Two weeks ago, the media had a field day when the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project announced that an asteroid was on a possible collision course with the earth in 2014. Follow-up information revealed that the cosmic bogeyman has a "zero probability" of striking the earth, according to Grant Stokes, principal investigator of the LINEAR project.

Of course, you didn’t hear much about the follow-up statement by the LINEAR folks. That’s not headline news material. Headlines are little more than devices for fear-mongering–catchpenny devices that increase newspaper sales. The business model of "fear equals job security" is not exclusive to the media. The federal government has parlayed 9/11 into a pyramid scheme of epic proportions–a political bogeyman that the Bush administration is hoping to ride to re-election.

What’s more frightening is the manner in which the current administration–most notably Attorney General John Ashcroft and his PATRIOT Acts I and II–is using 9/11 and the fear of future terrorist attacks to circumvent the civil liberties upon which the "land of the free" was founded.

Of course I think we should protect ourselves within reason, but we have to accept that life inherently comes with risk. Ultimately, we all die–be it in a terrorist attack or in a convalescent home. Due perhaps to our wealth and comfort–or perhaps to our arrogance–we Americans have padded ourselves from the reality that we are a part of nature–not apart from nature.

In short, we have conditioned ourselves to be a nation of pansies.

How else to describe an overmedicated, diagnosis-dependent society that makes claims of suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder thanks to watching 9/11 unfold on television?

The lights go out in the northeast part of the country for a few hours, and the fact that we weren’t killing and looting in mass quantity somehow speaks to the strength of the American resolve? Try living in parts of the world where people live without electricity every day. You can’t exalt the human spirit in New York City with a straight face when you consider that New Yorkers sacrificed by eating an abundance of food before it expired. Oh, the poor dears. Try turning out the lights when there’s no food, then talk to me about sacrifice and suffering.

If there’s one good thing to say about the unscrupulous media coverage that turned an orbiting space rock into a B-horror film monster, it’s that it reminded us that we are living on a planet at the whim of a chaotic universe. We don’t have to look elsewhere for danger. It’s right here.

Regarding civil liberties, to anyone who supports trading freedom for safety, I ask you: Can Ashcroft and his totalitarian legislation guarantee you safety from cancer? AIDS? West Nile? No. It can’t even protect you from another terrorist attack. In reality, nothing can.

And the PATRIOT Act certainly can’t help you survive a car crash–which is a danger far more likely than another 9/11. The National Safety Council (NSC) reports the odds of dying in a car crash in your lifetime are 1 in 242. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the odds of dying in a terrorist attack in your lifetime are 1 in 88,000.

Yes, the threat of future terrorist attacks is real, but let’s keep it in perspective. The odds of dying by being struck by lightening are 1 in 55,928; dying in your bathtub, 1 in 10,455; dying from falling off a ladder, 1 in 10,010; dying from homicide, 1 in 197.

There were five homicides in Boulder in 2002. There were zero terrorist attacks.

By the way, what are your chances of dying from an asteroid smacking into the earth? A mere 1 in 909,000.

So what do we do? Stop driving our cars? Stop climbing our mountains? Stop riding planes to visit our loved ones? Stop leaving our houses?

No. Accept that with life comes risk. Take reasonable precautions and avoid unreasonable risks to minimize danger, but realize that you can never fully eliminate danger. The worst thing we could do is surrender our civil liberties for any degree of security–let alone the pittance being offered by Ashcroft and Co.

If we acquiesce to the totalitarian measures of Ashcroft’s second take of the PATRIOT Act, we will destroy the very foundation this country was founded on: liberty. Foreign terrorists can only try to kill us, but they can’t change who we are as Americans. The domestic terrorists on Capitol Hill are attempting to coerce the American people–through strong-arm tactics like unlawful detainment that defy U.S. and international law–into handing over our very identity as American citizens.

Let’s not give in to government-propagated terrorism.

Let’s accept the real danger of our everyday lives and celebrate how precious life is in light of–perhaps because of–its inherent risk.

And let’s live as a country strong and brave enough to be free–not one that will passively trade freedom for fear.

Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com

[Mark Tyson]

Hey, pretty good article! I don't think it mentioned guns directly, but it is applicable to gun rights. You don't take away the freedom of the law abiding on the minor chance that they may do something horrible in the future. You can't regulate your way to a perfectly safe society - guns or anything else. You have to accept that life comes with risks.

Using this kind of logic while arguing with antis will avoid the pitfalls of just what the militia really was and how many robberies are stopped with guns versus how many murders are committed.

[Chris Rhines]

Yes!

Mr. Darcangelo puts a round through the ten-ring. Very good article.

- Chris

[Sir Galahad]

Before you go singing paeans of praise for the author, why don't you ask him what his views on gun ownership are? Lots of liberals say what he says but still believe guns to be an "actual threat" to society as opposed to a "perceived or imaginary threat" like terrorists. Sorry, but I don't credit authors until I know more about them. Reading one article and singing praises is really fairly naive. No different than reading one page of Das Kapital and singing the praises of communism. The hunting and pecking for "any port in a storm" to support your views is a tired gambit the liberals all use when they say things such as, "See! The Dixie Chix support what we said! Look at the flim Michael More made! Hey, look at all the celebrities against guns!" I'd rather read something someone on this board wrote out of his own personal convictions.

[longeyes]

Darcangelo is right about some things. We can't remove all risk
from our lives--and shouldn't. We have cocooned ourselves with
comfort to an unnatural degree and have developed some rather silly
ideas along the way. We are easy prey to fear-mongers in the media
and government and are too willing to trade away precious personal
liberties for the illusion of "safety."

But...

I agree with Sir Galahad that all too often such pundits wind up using
this information to suggest that gun owners are a punch of paranoid
freaks. Wrong.

Also, I think it's naive, in an era of mass-destruction weaponry of
varying types, to pooh-pooh the dangers of organized terrorism. We
are not talking about the random risk of being in a bank when it's
robbed. We are talking about the potential for a city to be nuked
or a wide area affected by deadly biological pathogens. If you live
in a concentrated population area that is a likely target, as I do,
you can't afford to be so complacent.

[El Tejon]

From the headlines of the Washington Post:

"GIANT ROCK TO DESTROY EARTH: Women and minorities hardest hit"


:D

[jimpeel]

So why don't those of you who are curious about his firearms stance simply e-mail him and ask instead of playing "Guess your best"?

Editorial@boulderweekly.com

The response addy is also there letters@boulderweekly.com for those who would like to praise or pan him.

[jimpeel]

How else to describe an overmedicated, diagnosis-dependent society that makes claims of suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder thanks to watching 9/11 unfold on television?:D

[DigitalWarrior]

Idiots should be prohibited from generating statistics.


By the way, what are your chances of dying from an asteroid smacking into the earth? A mere 1 in 909,000

***!!!!! That means about three people in San Diego could expect to die from being whacked by a spacerock. :banghead:

[jimpeel]

One in nine-hundred nine thousand does not indicate the number of people affected.

It is the ratio of the number of times an asteroid will miss the Earth for the number of times one will hit.

[Sergeant Bob]

Before you go singing paeans of praise for the author, why don't you ask him what his views on gun ownership are?

What difference do his views on gun ownership have to do with it? Whether or not he supports gun ownership doesn't make the article any less valid. You either agree with it or you don't. If you disagree with someone on one issue, does that make everything else they say invalid?

[dustind]

Sir Galahad, what would happen if an anti gun liberal where to say 1+2=3, or that the sky is blue? I get very similar arguments on Democratunderground.com all the time, whenever I link to a gun site or something against Moore's claims they accuse me and the website of being "wingnuts" and call the admins.

I second what Sergeant Bob says, btw he did not sound like a liberal or anti gun, not that I would care. He also seemed pro freedom by what he said.

As for the astroid, people die ocassionally from small rocks falling from space. I forget how many tons of matter are dropped on the earth each year, but it is a lot. Most of it disintigrates completely on entry though.

You could also figure odds by taking the probability/frequency of a hit. Then figure/average how big and where it would likely hit to get the number of people killed. Then divide that number by every other cause of death. There is a small chance the earth could be completely destroyed to some degree which you also have to figure in.

If you really want to know ask the author how he got it, I am guessing the CDC.