Terrorism Is Not a National Emergency

Tom Engelhardt of Antiwar.com looks at the threat of terrorist attacks in the U.S. from a different perspective:

In 2008, 14,180 Americans were murdered, according to the FBI. In that year, there were 34,017 fatal vehicle crashes in the U.S. and, so the U.S. Fire Administration tells us, 3,320 deaths by fire. More than 11,000 Americans died of the swine flu between April and mid-December 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; on average, a staggering 443,600 Americans die yearly of illnesses related to tobacco use, reports the American Cancer Society; 5,000 Americans die annually from food-borne diseases; an estimated 1,760 children died from abuse or neglect in 2007; and the next year, 560 Americans died of weather-related conditions, according to the National Weather Service, including 126 from tornadoes, 67 from rip tides, 58 from flash floods, 27 from lightning, 27 from avalanches, and 1 from a dust devil.

As for airplane fatalities, no American died in a crash of a U.S. carrier in either 2007 or 2008, despite 1.5 billion passengers transported. In 2009, planes certainly went down and people died. In June, for instance, a French flight on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared in bad weather over the Atlantic, killing 226. Continental Connection Flight 3407, a regional commuter flight, crashed into a house near Buffalo, N.Y., that February killing 50, the first fatal crash of a U.S. commercial flight since August 2006. And in January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549, assaulted by a flock of birds, managed a brilliant landing in New York's Hudson River when disaster might have ensued. In none of these years did an airplane go down anywhere due to terrorism, though in 2007 two terrorists smashed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with propane tanks into the terminal of Glasgow International Airport. (No one was killed.)

And yet the underwear bomber (which was most likely a false-flag operation anyway) had people panicking about another 9/11. Perhaps we should all try to keep the threat of terrorism in perspective.

A Brief Thought on "Enemy Combatants"

I don't know about you, but I just don't feel comfortable with a government that imprisons and tortures individuals without due process thinking it can tell me who my enemies are.

The Abortion Issue: A Conflict of Rights

The subject of abortion deals with the inevitable clash between property rights and the right to life. Given that predicament, how should this conflict be resolved? To put it in more crass terms, if protecting the rights of one means "violating" the rights of another, whose rights should take precedence?

(Read the rest at Examiner.com.)

Get the State Out of Marriage

Jerry Salcido, a trial and appellate lawyer and legal chair for the HomeSchool Association of California, nails it:

Thanks to the state, marriage is no longer a covenant between two people or between two people and God. No, marriage is a state classification, which connotes state-provided benefits or detriments. Marriage is married to the state imposed tax structure and the state created probate system, and in many instances marriage defines the powers of the state over the married individuals.

This unholy union between the state and marriage has transformed marriage from an inalienable or natural right in which government's only place was as protector of that right, to a civil right in which the state became the creator of the right. ...

... By transitioning away from a protector of rights to a provider of rights, the state has laid the groundwork for the problems that are so evident in the same sex marriage issue. If the government were to take its proper place as a protector of rights then a private union between a same sex couple which the couple calls "marriage" would be inconsequential to same sex marriage opponents, even though it may be morally repugnant to some and nonsensical to others. Likewise, refusal to recognize a private same sex union as "marriage" would be inconsequential to gays and lesbians, even though such refusal may personally offend the practitioners of same sex unions. In a free society any individual could "marry" whomever he wants by whatever procedure he desires, and the government's only role would be to make sure that in doing so he does not violate the natural rights of others. ...

... Until we divorce marriage from the state, the right to marry will never be protected and the problems associated with Proposition 8 will be repeated throughout the world. Both sides of the Proposition, therefore, should agree to truly protect their natural rights by removing the state from the equation. In the meantime the world will wait to see how California protects its interests in the Proposition 8 lawsuits.

Mocking the Memory of Flight 93

Yes, 9/11 changed everything. Since that day government has continued to grow bigger, more expensive, and more intrusive. Case in point: the decision by the federal government to go ahead and build a permanent memorial to the 40 passengers and crew of United Flight 93 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It isn't that this endeavor will end up costing close to $60 million; it's how the government is going about acquiring the 2,200 acres of land needed for the monument and park.

What's happening now seems to be the climax in a showdown between the owners of the property on which the plane crashed and those who want nothing to prevent the new memorial from opening on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. You may recall that memorial proponents were angered a couple of years ago when one of the property owners in question, Mike Svonavec, sought $10 million for his 273-acre plot of land. Not surprisingly, many saw this outrageous asking price as an insult to the memories of the heroes of Flight 93.

It was the relatives, however, who inflicted the ultimate insult...

(Read the rest at Examiner.com.)

Best and Worst of 2008

Chuck Baldwin reflects on the past year.