This headline reminded me of a conversation between my boys, years ago -- Tim: "I'm tough." Ben: "No you're not." Tim: "I'm tough, compared to lots of kids." Ben: "Tough guys don't say 'compared to.'" There's a germ of what was bothering Plato here, the idea that, beyond the comparative statuses, there is some absolute status. Compare: "It's greener, but its not green." Said of paint, that makes perfect sense. "He's happier, but he's not happy." "He's larger, but he's not large." "He's smarter, but he's not smart." "He's richer, but he he's not rich." All of these make sense in some context. And it seems important about our language that this use is possible.
The headline still leaves me puzzled. I cannot imagine any measures that would make an entity as big and vulnerable as a country safe, or even safer. One can surely make certain attacks less likely. But compare: "I have locked this door; we are safer." That is true if we are in house, with a finite number of doors. Locking a door while sitting out on the prairie doesn't make us safer.
The problem is this: if we could monitor all the plausible avenues of attack, we could only do that by putting the whole country on perpetual high alert. And a country on perpetual high alert can be destroyed quite simply by false alarms, and it will be gradually ground down by the high alert status itself.
Posted by shea0017 at July 26, 2004 10:32 AM