Krauss tries to minimize Muslim terrorism

Physicist Lawrence M. Krauss seems to be regularly contributing essays to the New Yorker mag, and his latest is Thinking Rationally About Terror:

“Panic” is not too strong a word. According to a New York Times poll conducted earlier this month, people are as terrified about terrorism today as at any time since September 11, 2001. Donald Trump called for the closing of borders to Muslims; John McCain said, in response to the President’s address on the San Bernardino shooting, that “this is the war of our time.” ...

After the religious extremism of the young couple had been established, the anxiety level skyrocketed. Nothing had changed about the substance of the crime. Still, one minute, we were debating legislation; the next, we were talking about war.

Indeed, all around the world, when violence is perpetrated by terrorists instead of by other criminals, governments respond in extraordinary ways. ...

Exactly how much more dangerous has terrorism made our lives? To answer this question, it helps to run the numbers. ...

And, in the process, we need to distinguish policies that can realistically improve the safety of the public from those that only appear to do so.

This is mostly a political rant from a leftist atheist evolutionist multiculturalist, and most of his opinions are off-topic for this blog.

But Krauss uses his status as a scientist to argue that a rational person would not worry much about terrorism because the total number of murders in France and USA are relatively small so far.

He radically underestimates the cost. There is a large segment of the Islamic world that is in a long-term war with Western Civilization. This war has already cost us trillions of dollars with wars in Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. It has retricted our travel freedoms with TSA airport procedures. It has emboldened the Left to cut back our First and Second Amendment rights.

More seriously, if Europe does not find the will to resist, it will be subjugated under Sharia Law in a couple of generations.

A rational approach would at least compare the alternatives. What if we let 5M Muslim migrants into the USA, and only 1% are terrorists? Japan does not let any Muslims in, and it does not have any terrorism.

Krauss hates Republicans and anyone else who is against same-sex marriage, so he is against the Muslims also, but he writes an essay minimizing their terrorist threats.