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Macomb, IL – After Sunday's 10th anniversary of 9-11, two of many consequences of times of terror offer a positive and a negative result - more tolerance but more complacency - and show that balance between extremes remains necessary. Contradictions are common.
On the positive side, Americans are increasingly tolerant of a variety of views in speaking, teaching and making books available in libraries, according to research just released by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC).
On the negative side, however, preparing for future threats has been de-emphasized in recent years, says Greg Evans of Saint Louis University.
NORC survey director Tom Smith said more tolerance exists despite what people feel are serious threats, but Evans' survey detected denial, too.
Surveyed whether [quote] "a Muslim clergyman who preaches hatred of the United States" should be able to speak publicly, 41% of Americans said yes. When asked if such a Muslim extremist should be able to teach, 29% of Americans said yes in 2008 but more (32%) said yes in 2010.
Smith's survey found that 49% of Americans in 2008 would allow a book by a Muslim extremist to be in their local library, about the same percentage approved last year.
In Evans' survey of public health officials before 9-11, 75% of them said that they thought a bioterrorist attack was likely to strike a US city in the next five years, but just 2% of them thought the attack would happen in their city.
NORC's survey, which compared tolerance from 1972 to last year, found increased tolerance for views of gays, Communists, atheists and even those who favor dropping elections to let the military run the country.
Smith said, "Two things in particular account for this trend: an increase in education and changing attitudes across generations."
Oddly, although Muslim extremists still are tolerated less than other minorities, fewer Americans tolerate racists' speaking publicly. However, an rising percentage of Americans thought it was OK to teach racism and to have books supporting racism in libraries.
Evans, an expert in bio-security, warned officials about the threat from attacks using biological agents like anthrax or smallpox. But his warnings haven't been heeded, he says, noting, "My fear is that we've become very complacent about the next terrorist attack, and I definitely think we will have one. We're going to be less prepared as the years move forward if the country continues to cut funding for these efforts."
Evans says after 9-11, the government made progress in preparing for future terrorist attacks, with state and local health departments and first responders funded to hire experts in bio-terrorism and to buy equipment. So Evans and his team went to work creating fact sheets and other training materials to prepare public health officials. After the anthrax letter scare, the center was flooded with requests for the materials.
"We were getting thousands of requests to provide our fact sheets and information because there was just nothing else out there; no one else was working in this area," he said. "More and more communities were becoming worried about another bio-terrorism event and they wanted to be prepared for it,"
However, in the decade since, the emphasis shifted to planning for pandemics such as flu, so people hired to work on bio-terrorism moved to infectious diseases.
Evans continued, "There has been less emphasis on bio-terrorism, but terrorist organizations are still thinking very strongly about using biological agents. A recent New York Times article indicated that they are looking at the potential of using ricin in backpack bombs. It's understandable from a psychological standpoint," he added. "We don't want to think about these bad things and the further away we get from 9-11 and the anthrax letters, the less we're going to focus on them. But that doesn't make the threat any less real."
Politically, a profound contradiction persists in law enforcement. Republican Mike Lofgren, who retired this summer after 28 years as a Congressional aide, including 16 years as a staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees, wrote, "For people who profess to revere the Constitution, it is strange that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the material expression of the principles embodied in that document. Most Republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested in the effective repeal of Fourth Amendment protections by the Patriot Act, the weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public hysteria following 9/11."
Bill Knight is a freelance writer who teaches at Western Illinois University. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of WIU or Tri States Public Radio.