The only thing we ought to fear is fear itself.

In all the furor over the attempted attack on the Christmas flight, what panicking, paranoid Americans are forgetting are three things:
1.) It failed. Not, albeit through the gun-toting brilliance of a 21st-century John Wayne dressed up as an Air Marshall or through the meticulous undercover work of super-spies, but it did fail. No plane exploded. No people died.
2.) We live in a world now that even with our big oceanic borders, is not that safe anymore.
3.) Thousands of people die every year in terrorist attacks. Just because it rarely has happened here, doesn't mean that we're special.