The Reasonable Man Standard

Have no misconception that even ultra-liberals believe in the Second Amendment. Only in its proper context, right after the First Amendment. And in all other ways penultimate.

So I got to talking with friends last night. As we talked about September 11, my wife told them the story about the threats her building has received. On one occasion, the building was evacuated and the evacuees crossed the street, only to look back at the building to see if a plane hit it. The news crew was also camped right across the street. Not real bright. Well shortly after September 11 and that threat they had conferences with the tenants of the building and let them ask questions. After informing the tenants that the building could likely withstand most assaults and that the stairwell doors were 4-hour fire doors, some of the tenants asked what to do in the event of a direct hit on their floor by a plane. Well there's no good answer to that question.

To the extent an answer exists, it is the reasonable man standard. When the law works its best, this is the engine that works. You cannot put land mines in your front yard to guard against terrorists, but a nuclear power plant is expected to have safety protocols even against criminal actions. The question is how far are we willing to go? Is it reasonable to divest ourselves of democracy in order to prevent terrorist attacks? Or again is the unfortunate answer not to spend billions and billions of dollars to make us as safe as we can be and instead to concentrate on what we believe is the reasonable, optimal level of safety. I don't want to be as safe as possible in the world. There will be plenty of time for that after I'm dead.

Of course, for fun there is another option for your building that we joked about last night. On every building over 40 floors the 41st floor can be a dedicated anti-aircraft floor. With several AA guns with overlapping fields of fire and blow out windows. You know, guns kind of like the one that Jane Fonda sat on in Hanoi. Imagine the next time someone tries to fly a commercial jetliner into a building being one of the tenants. Hearing the air raid siren, seeing the 41st floor windows blow out, hearing the guns start to power and roll on their tracks and by the time you see that jetliner, explosions of black and white smoke and flak fill the air. The plane starts to bob and weave like something right out of Operation Marketgarden in Band of Brothers. Instead of that last picture from the tower with the airplane photoshopped in, we could have a new postcard. With the plane in the field of fire as it gets torn to pieces. Of course superimposed over a background of a waving American flag, with a superimposed translucent "spirit" eagle appearing to use its talons to crush the plane out of the sky. Sounds reasonable right?