Just some thoughts...
What we saw yesterday was the Cosmic Joker - the completely unexpected and cataclysmic event, that popped up out of nowhere.
The short-term consequences will be unpredictability and volatility. New methods and practices will have to be instituted in our lives, as we finally, and truly, begin to fight this war.
Here, in North America, the war has always been somewhere else. France. Germany. Russia. Vietnam.
Now, we will begin the war in earnest, and like the citizens of England in World War Two, we will each pay a cost: the cost of fighting this war. It will be a tax on our existence. It will put some limits on what we can do, and how we can do things. It will, for a time, disrupt and delay commerce. It will change many things.
And like World War Two, the war against terrorism will be long; victory will seem uncertain.
But long-term, we will adapt. We will find ways. Commerce will renew itself, and life will move on, even as the war is still being fought.
This war may not be won in our lifetime, but free people will find a way to live, and to progress. The tremendous strength of democracy is its excess capacity: the ability to provide, far beyond the level of subsistence.
The only strength of terrorism lies in its ability to inspire fear - but people are not motivated, in the long term, by fear. They reject it. Long-term, people are not motivated by the fanatic beliefs of any ideology - be it Islamic, Communist, Nazi, Christian: they reject it. People always favour plurality, and choice, over time.
This is not the first time the world has witnessed the use of fear by fanatics. It won't be the last.
The war will take something from the profit line - but it will not kill profit, and it will not kill freedom. |
