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I was in a small group in the back yard of someone’s home when the talk turned to fear of terrorism. We were sitting next to the man’s pool while kids played in the water and the adults talked about scarier things.

“I’m just about scared to travel anywhere these days,” the man said. “The world is so scary now because of the terrorists. I’m sure not going to New York City or some big place like that. Why would anyone even think about living there these days?”

I hadn’t been saying anything, because I usually get myself into social trouble by being the lone dissenter in such situations. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, though, so I asked the man if he knew that more people were killed every single year in swimming pools than were killed in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Someone scoffed. A couple of people laughed.

“Oh, the pool’s safe,” the man said. “We keep the kids away when we’re not around, so we can control this. But when you’re dealing with terrorists, you don’t have any control.”

I kept my mouth shut, because I knew there was no way to make him understand a very simple statistical fact. Almost 3,000 people died in the World Trade Centers attack, but close to 3,500 people die in U.S. swimming pools each and every year. Tell me which you should be more afraid of.

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There was a brief news item Sunday about police raiding a plane full of passengers in Detroit and taking three of them off for questioning. We’re now seeing just how clearly the incident points out that Americans have become paranoid and stupid in their irrational fear of terrorism.

That’s Shoshana Hebshi on the right. She’s a suburban housewife from Ohio. Her father is from Saudi Arabia and her mother is Jewish. She’s just a typical American with mixed ethnicity. But because she happened to be seated on a Frontier Airlines plane from Denver to Detroit Sunday with two men from India — who also didn’t know each other and didn’t talk to each other — passengers and crew were suspicious of them.

What were they suspicious of? There’s no reason to think they were suspicious of anything other than the fact that they looked a bit different from the rest of us. We don’t have first-hand accounts from the two Indian men, but Hebshi wrote extensively about her experience on Monday.

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It’s not often I have reason to praise a major politician. It’s even less often that I expect to have praise for Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown, but Gov. Moonbeam did something praiseworthy last week.

After the California Legislature passed a bill requiring helmets for minors skiing or snowboarding, Brown vetoed it, telling lawmakers in his veto message that parents should make the decision for their children instead. The veto message (PDF) said:

To the Members of the California State Senate:

I am returning Senate Bill 105 without my signature.

This measure would impose criminal penalites on a child under the age of 18 and his or her parents if the child skis or snowboards without a helmet.

While I appreciate the value of wearing a ski helmet, I am concerned about the continuing and seemingly inexorable transfer of authority from parents to the state. Not every human problem deserves a law.

I believe parents have the ability and the responsibility to make good choices for their children.

Sincerely,
Edmund G. Brown

I’m a big fan of wearing helmets when doing dangerous things, but I’m an even bigger fan of parents having the power to make decisions for their own children.

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