I'm still shaking my head.
One of the latest bits of news is that Tommy Thompson expressed concern over the vulnerability of the nation's food supply to terrorist threat. While it is a very real, very rational fear, the solution is not one that is practical within the US. To test all food imports would mean an increased cost to the consumer, via trickle down prices and/or increased taxes to cover the burdensome expense. A tax would be most likely, meaning either a greatly increased deficit, or an increased tax burden on the American public. Barring such taxation, the cost of testing coupled with the steadily increasing fuel prices, would mean we're on target for runaway inflation, the bane of any administration's existence, let alone one that alleges itself to be fiscally responsible.
The larger issue, however, is that when we speak of "safety", we have confused our terms to mean absence of risk. Anything that you introduce to your body's metabolic system has a certain degree of risk, be it through allergy, unremoved pesticides, poisons, what have you. A terror attack would only increase the risk, an unpleasant prospect, to be sure, but one that cannot be avoided without becoming a totalitarian nation.
We have designed our automobiles to be increasingly safe, and yet we clamor for more, mindless of the fact that the safety laws already in place are a large reason that many Americans pay half as much in car payments as they do in mortgage payments. We do so under the ignorant assumption that we can create a riskless automobile. Physics dictate that when two objects are in motion, there is a risk of collision, no matter how small. I remember a story, possibly apocryphal, about a year when there were two cars in the state of Ohio, and those two cars ended up in a collision. When you consider the millions of automobiles in the US times the numbers of trips taken, the odds of having a collision on any given excursion are infinitessimally small, not even measurable as a percentage, and yet, that is not good enough.
Add to this the multibillion dollar a year child safety industry that, interestingly enough, has not eliminated child deaths due to injury, and you have a good example of how lack of common sense costs us Americans far more money than we're willing to admit.
Fortunately, I'm among the 300-some odd thousand Americans who can proudly say:
"Don't blame me...I voted for Badnarik".
Respectfully submitted,
Gideon MacLeish