Defiance

Is England being defiant, or is it merely accepting the threat it has exposed itself too out of ennui. The message “We Are Not Afraid” seems to be that terrorism is just a case of “mind over matter”; if Britons all (pretend) that they’re not afraid, then the terrorists can’t win. This is nonsense. Fear is sometimes useful, rational, and healthy. We’re justifiably concerned that people and things will be destroyed by terrorist violence. The solution is not to pretend it’s not a problem, but to address it forthrightly. Not being afraid is a useful mantra when one accepts that there may be an immediate upsurge in desperate violence as one does the difficult work of clearing away the terorrists and their infrastructure. But as a call to inaction and continued political correctness, it’s a laughable response that will confirm the terrorist’s ideology that we’re weak, suicidal, and too decadent to engage in self-defense.

Modest impositions on our way of life do not show that the “terrorists have won.” They do not win when we take reasonable measures to defend ourselves; they win when they kill us, hurt our economies, prevent us from pursuing our chosen foreign policies, intimidate us into not assimilating their immigrants, and otherwise prod us into enabling their goals. They want to exploit our nihilistic political correctness so that basic demands of loyalty and citizenship are not imposed on Islamic terrorist sympathizers within our borders. Their goal is not to scare us for the heck of it; it’s to scare us into inaction, concessions, and the like.

If England and the US maintain our outdated border security, immigration, and foreign policies in the face of terrorism, it will not prove we’re unafraid . . . it will prove that we’re foolish. Because it’s these suicidal policies that have enabled terrorists to attack us in the first place.