Homeland Security and Emergency Management

¶ … Steve Courtemanch

Steve, I appreciate your support for Dahl's (2011) argument, but it appears that you also ignore many logically failed premises in his essay. While there are strong facts that support the need to combine agencies on many levels, the inherent threat of international terrorism is blown way out of proportion. Intelligence has become more about quantity than quality. The terrorist events of 9-11 were preventable and the official report is constantly flawed leading many to believe that international terrorism is not a big problem. The vagueness within the term "terrorism" itself, and the emotional responses that this word elicits suggests a different kind of problem.

Your fear of fear itself is bordering on paranoia when you discussed Ben Franklin's famous quote about the tradeoff between liberty and security. This may be true to you because you have never experienced true freedom. For me, once true liberty and freedom are acquired, security is not necessary, but I could be wrong. Unfortunately too much security locks us within a dangerous mind frame where ideas are boxed into convenient phrases and the truth is ignored for emotional reasons beyond our intellectual control. The wilderness is everywhere and cannot be avoided, it is my opinion that we embrace the risks in life with more courage and reason instead of panic and fear.

Bryan Murphy

Bryan, your words are inspiring and promote a refreshing opinion about the current state of intelligence gathering and tyranny. You point out that America is reflecting a very ominous state of affairs by its actions by the U.S. Government and its many agencies. The hypocrisy of the intellectual class not being able to identify the flaws within the system were laid out in a very useful manner in your argument and I support that segment of what you have written.