Tuesday, July 03, 2007

The Unhealthy Obsession with enslaving me.

Gerard Henderson (SMH july 3) has a right to be unhealthily obsessed with terrorism. It doesn't follow that those that aren't are committing non sequiturs. Nobody claimed that there was a causal link between AIDS and terrorism Mr. Henderson, but there is a causal link between AIDS deaths and the war on drugs. Deaths caused by government policy in the West outnumber deaths caused by terrorism even assuming only 10% of AIDS deaths resulted from policies that encouraged needle-sharing.
Governments do not have the right to be obsessed with terrorism or anything else because by definition obsession is excessive focus on a thing to the detriment of other things. The fact that a population was attacked does not give it's government a right to destroy it's people's freedoms. Historically the death toll from government limitations on freedoms dwarfs that from terrorism. September 11 added up to about 3 average days of Nazi murdering or 4 days of Soviet murdering. Clearly what we should be "obsessed" about is the limitation of government power, something Mr. Henderson used to be concerned about himself.
Nobody denies that islamic terrorists want to destoy our way of life, but why should we help them?

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