When I was a lad (before you were born) Australians used to idolise America and their creative can-do about everything attitude. We used to dream about having colour photos and movies and "clear the way for another freeway" attitude. Everything that came out of America was bigger, better and easier to use than anywhere else in the world. America was the country to copy and the place where you got the latest and best of everything. American achievements were used all the time here as models to push forward our progress.

Then the government grew strong and wealthy on the success of the great American production machine. It became so strong and wealthy that it decided that it was the power not the factories and producers of the wealth. Then the American people in their comfort of the wealth that they had created forgot to notice that the government was growing faster than the industries and wealth building companies and was also slowly undermining the very constitution on which the wealth and freedom to create that wealth was based.

As the freedoms were slowly and gradually removed for all the "best" reasons the American people lost their leadership in superior creative endeavour and traded goods and services to be replaced by a government policy on what America should do in the world. And thus a political machine was created. Not of the people, not by the people and certainly not for the people. But of a government who changed the purpose of the entire country from a productive free trading nation idolised and welcome in the world to a manipulating, meddling, political monster.

At this very moment your constitution lies in tatters from a one man tyranny. Your freedoms are gone and your harassment in your daily endeavours are so distracting that being in business is the least fun you can have with a crowd. Regulations make building almost impossible and delays endless. Health, safety, insurance and legal threats a nightmare to any operation. Government gone mad. Internally and externally.

The funny part of it is "Non government Americans" are truly great and lovely people. I have met many of them and this is so sad because their rulers have let them down dreadfully. (And they have been very lax in letting this happen)

If the good guys that are left do not get busy and rip out the rot at the top and the infection in the middle and re-install the constitution as it was written and intended the entire country will soon self-destruct quicker than an Impossible Mission tape.

God bless America,
Merv

You can make a lot of trouble and a lot of enemies with 44 billion. One of the reasons the USA annoys people so much is the huge gap between what they claim to do and represent in the field of press freedom democracy and human rights and what they actually do. The internet is largely responsible for the gaffe being so thoroughly blown in recent years. They will either have to suppress free debate on the internet or revise their copy.

Best wishes

RH

Good column on the reaction to terrorists.

You observations are acute, and are in accord with research on societal risk perception.

Think on this: People in developed countries are fearful of wild animals, or nuclear power stations, and have little fear of power lawn mowers or back yard swimming pools. Yet, objectively they are much more likely to be injured by their lawn mower or have their nearest and dearest drown in the home swimming pool. Their chances of being mauled by a tiger or being a victim of another Chernobyl are zero for all practical purposes.

The most significant work on this topic has been done by Slovic. His data are based on American and western European population samples, but his results hold well in other developed countries, and there is reason to believe that something the same holds universally, albeit with different threats.

Slovic's research shows that risk perception is two dimensional. One axis might be called benign through to dreaded to the extreme. Benign needs no explanation, things classed as dread involve actual or possible large loss of life, and take the innocent and helpless along with responsible adults.

The other dimension goes from familiar to strange. The home swimming pool is familiar., whereas an unusual high tech medical treatment, or an exotic carnivore would be rated strange.

Slovic's work shows that people discount the dangers of familiar things that bring them benefits (power lawnmower) while they wildly exaggerate the dangers of things that are weird and unfamiliar, but just could have catastrophic affects, such as atomic power plants.

By this model, an Islamic terrorist in the UK would be much more feared than IRA terrorists were some years back.

Statistically, as a percentage of annual death and injury statistics both threats are trivial. However, the public perception is not silly: both the Islamists and the IRA are symptomatic of larger anxieties about the state of UK society and, in the case of the Islamists, the world in general. These anxieties are well founded.

In both cases, the political response to the Islamists and the IRA mirrors and amplifies public fears. In the case of the USA at present, it is clear that the Islamist threat is being used after the style of demagogues throughout the ages. Rhetoric about "the enemy"and the "war on terror" (how did the "war on drugs"and the "war on poverty" fare in the USA and elsewhere?) subverts rational analysis of the situation.

With respect to other comments in the latest Dailyreckoning, for many of us the concern is not that the USA is acting the way empires have always done, but that the USA is acting in ways that empires do when they run amuck, as they have done from time to time in history. The unique and alarming situation is that the USA is running amuck with greater power of destruction by many orders than any former state in history.

As for as being surprised that the Islamic terrorists attacking the West are middle class, I am surprised that you are surprised. Any reading of the history of the major revolutions in France, America, Russia and China shows that the revolutionary leaders have all been middle class. The same holds for smaller revolutions in the modern era: the revolutions throughout Europe in 1848, revolutions against Spain in South and Central America.The list goes on.. Marx, and a host of later commentators have pointed out that the middle class is the revolutionary class. Analysis of political events in terms of social class is out of fashion these days, but very recent events seem to have concentrated minds.

Could lead to some interesting discussions about the critical role of alienated members of the middle classes. Right now in the west, middle class people are being proletarianised at a high rate ( as Karl Marx predicted), and if there is an economic slump there will be millions of such people created. They could make the Islamists look like pussy cats.

cheers

B.K.