Friedman In Our Time

Thomas Friedman very rarely says anything I like. But blue moons do happen. I just saw him on CNN saying (I quote from memory):

Our day is supposed to be the Fourth of July, not September 11th. We’re supposed to be a beacon of hope, not an exporter of fear. Are we going to be taking our shoes and our belts off forever? We need to accept a little more insecurity in our lives so we can live like Americans again.

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4 Responses to Friedman In Our Time

  1. MBH May 2, 2011 at 10:01 pm #

    Mr. Y writes similarly that security is mostly a state of mind.

  2. CK May 3, 2011 at 7:21 am #

    Are we going to be taking our shoes and our belts off forever?

    Yes. Yes we are. Because the 33%-44% of Americans who fly every year simply could not stand to bear the miniscule chance that their fellow ‘muricans might get blow’d the fuck up.

    Meanwhile, the people who actually do the flying want nothing more than to have a normal, reasonably convenient experience at the airport.

    The non-flying public practices a peculiar kind of cruel compassion on those of us who have to fly.

    Has anyone in history ever better-summarized the essence of what it is to be an American than H.L. Mencken:

    The American people, taking one with another, constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages, and … they grow more timorous, more sniveling, more poltroonish, more ignominious every day.

  3. zsignal May 3, 2011 at 7:49 pm #

    At first glance, when I saw this in my Google Reader, I thought, “Hey! I like David Friedman….oh wait…THOMAS Friedman…yeah, don’t like him all that much.”

    • Roderick May 3, 2011 at 7:59 pm #

      Yeah, Thomas Friedman is David Friedman from the antimatter universe.

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