Scucca,

In the wake of shocks, the affected parties often overreact. Such a tendency to go to excess appears to be an inherent aspect of human nature. It might well be the means by which people and societies recalibrate their risk perceptions through trial and error, with the proverbial pendulum swinging from underestimation to overestimation of risk and somewhat back before it finally settles. One sees the tendency to go to excess both in economic shocks and non-economic ones. In the longer-run, such excesses are not sustainable without inflicting real damage on those clinging to such a posture.

I believe New York Times syndicated columnist Thomas Friedman explained the situation quite well when he wrote last year, "Yes, in the wake of 9/11, we need new precautions, new barriers. But we also need our old habits and sense of openness." In another column in 2006, he argued, "The way you keep good jobs in this country is not by building big walls, but by attracting people with big ideas — and then giving them the freedom to do whatever can be done with anyone, anywhere, anytime."

For what it is worth, I believe President Reagan's Farewell Address summed up how the United States should envision itself vis-a-vis the world at large. In that speech, Reagan spoke of a confident, open, and inclusive America. "I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still."

The challenges of the ongoing ideological struggle with radical Islamists do not justify a "wall around America" mentality, even as they require strength and persistence in that struggle. A perspective that seeks to fence off the U.S. border, curb the number of foreign students who wish to study in America, and transform American embassies and consulates into isolated and inaccessible fortresses is nothing more than naked appeasement of fear. It is an approach that is alien to much of post-World War II American history. A confident and strong nation does not run from the world. Rather, it reaches out to the world and proudly proclaims the principles for which it stands. Reagan would never accept an America that retreated in fear behind fences even as he stood his ground against the nation's Cold War foes while fully exploring emerging opportunities for a new relationship with the Soviet Union. Neither should a post-9/11 America surrender to fear. If it does, it will have lost an important part of the dynamism that has helped fuel its long rise to prosperity and strength.