Round up the usual suspects

The terror attack in Brussels, Belgium last night was a tragedy.  That much we know is true.  Lives were ended or forever changed by angry young men with no regard for human life, including their own.   What causes or inspires people to strap a suicide vest to their body and kill fellow humans indiscriminately.  Examining the causes of such activity would serve us all, and somewhere in academe there are probably scholars who will publish treatises in 10 years telling us what caused the mayhem last night.  In the meantime, the bleating sheep on TV and radio will tell us we must give up a few more civil rights in the name of security.  For some reason, the violent death of 26 or 30 or 3000 people cause a visceral reaction that 50,000 deaths from firearms or automobiles over the course of a year does not.  I would hazard a guess we are coarsened by the daily death toll from accidental and deliberate casualties caused by guns and cars but still shocked by death caused by ideologues.  That increases the danger we face as a society.  As we trade freedom for security our democracy dies a little at a time and it will be hard to get it back, short of using the same violence we are seemingly so afraid of.