911
at families on the freeway? Who murder strangers on the street or in their homes as a rite of passage? Who spray their classmates and teachers with gunfire? Rats. The the so-called (by the press) "Attack on America" was them with a bigger budget and better planning. In a letter to The New York Times of September 23, horror novelist Stephen King noted that "the boys who shot up Columbine High School planned to finish their day by hijacking a jetliner and flying it into - yes, that's right - the World Trade Center."
In the great monotheistic religions, persons have free choice. They can choose to do good or evil. Science, however, offers choice only within certain, sometimes calculable, limits of certainty. Frontier theory takes the scientific view.
Terrorists are exiled persons without a place of exile. They are unemployed, possibly unemployable. They don't belong anywhere. They have no stake, no hope, nothing to lose, nothing to do but die. So death is their frontier. The outcome is inevitable.
In a free society, there is probably no certain, short-term defense against terrorism, whether it originates in the Middle East or next door. Frontier theory gives us the conclusion that an effective answer can only involve the opening of a new frontier in space to which fanatical religious and political groups can escape and be isolated while they grow up.
Will they grow up? Sure. The intolerant and bloodthirsty Puritan "Pilgrims" did, and America is the result.
To those who would raise the hackneyed practicality issue as an objection to a "high frontier", one can only respond, "do your homework". Proofs have been given that moving into space dose not require the breaking of any natural laws, or even the use of any fictitious technologies. If the doing presents certain engineering, financial and political challenges, so much the better - Sauce for the goose.
Americans will define themselves by how they respond to 9/11. Predictably, we have wrapped ourselves in the flag (some would say hidden under it) and plotted "justice". One hopes we can look at ourselves and our world with dispassionate logic, realize that enclosure is the root cause of our grief, and make something wonderful happen.
References:
Gibran, Kalil, (translated from the Arabic by Anthony R. Ferris), Kahlil Gibran: a Self Portrait, The Citadel Press, New York, 1959
Calhoun, John B., "Population Density and Social Pathology", Scientific American, February 1962, pp. 139-146.
O'Neill, Gerard K., The High Frontier: Human
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