Only one of those is something that foreigners did to the people of the US on its own soil, and that's narrowly what those who are afraid of another 9/11 are willing to give up significant freedoms to escape. Americans feel much less existentially threatened by messes they make in their own backyards and things they do to themselves.
I believe what you're vocalizing is a younger-generation mindset (one that didn't feel the whiplash of 9/10 being a day everyone felt safe in their beds and 9/12 being a day nobody did). That younger mindset is one that I'm only too eager to see become the dominant mindset in American politics.
From an older generation, we have: 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed'
Governments are responsible for more than protection for foreign threats. I think the remaining items on the GP's list are legitimate in light of Jefferson's words.
>I believe what you're vocalizing is a younger-generation mindset (one that didn't feel the whiplash of 9/10 being a day everyone felt safe in their beds and 9/12 being a day nobody did). That younger mindset is one that I'm only too eager to see become the dominant mindset in American politics.
As an American who was in his mid-thirties on 9/11, I have to disagree with your assertion about 9/10 vs. 9/11. I was (especially as a native New Yorker who worked across the street[0] from the World Trade Center for several years prior to 9/11, and provided IT support and services to several companies impacted by the events of 9/11) appalled and angry at the death and destruction wrought by those bloodthirsty scum.
However, I applauded the decision to not only rebuild WTC, but to build an even bigger building than the ones that came down. When challenged on that opinion (with the idea that it was just painting an even bigger target on a new building), my thought was that 'freedom isn't safe, and to ensure liberty risks are necessary.'
As such, I was disgusted with the Patriot Act[1] and the various other surveillance mechanisms and security theater (cf. the TSA[2]) implemented after 9/11.
I think that many folks felt a loss of control (control which they never actually had) and sought out means to regain that feeling of control. One friend refused to fly after 9/11, not because she believed that driving 1000 or 1500 miles rather than flying was actually safer (she knew the statistics as well as I did), but because she felt more in control in doing so.
And that's dumb, especially when it comes to making laws. I wish more of my fellow Americans understood that.
As traumatic as 9/11 was for me (I still avoid the WTC whenever possible, not because I'm afraid, but because it's still painful to think about 22 years later), I believe that a free and open society is important enough to accept some risk to preserve it.
I believe what you're vocalizing is a younger-generation mindset (one that didn't feel the whiplash of 9/10 being a day everyone felt safe in their beds and 9/12 being a day nobody did). That younger mindset is one that I'm only too eager to see become the dominant mindset in American politics.