Questions Over Fear

Brink Lindsey of the CATO Institute criticizes fears over immigration and terrorism, calling them ‘manufactured and overblown.’

Fears of both topics are rooted in truth. We have a problem with illegal immigration and terrorism. I don’t see any room to doubt that assertion as fact. Thus, I can’t agree that these problems are manufactured. Unless, of course, you are saying they are manufactured by illegal immigrants or terrorists.

I do believe that both fronts are, in the words of Brink Lindsey, ‘overblown.’ For example, most of the country does not suffer from the ill-effects of illegal immigration, but we all benefit from it in the form of cheap products, food, etc. Hearing from people in New Hampshire that they are gravely concerned about Mexican immigrants is, to put it lightly, ridiculous.

That same concept applies to terrorism. “The probability of an American being killed by an act of terrorism is 1 in 80,000, which is more or less the same probability of being hit by an asteroid. But, no one is frightening people with the latter” argues Professor John Mueller, Chair of National Security Studies at Ohio State University. In other words, the fear of terrorism in the US is not proportional to the threat we face.

We as a country need to face this fear to threat ratio more realistically. Again, these threats are not manufactured. But they are not omnipresent either. If you want to be fearful of something, be afraid of your car. After all, you have a 1 in 80 lifetime chance of being killed in a car crash. That’s far more lethal than both immigration and terrorism.