November 10, 2006 11:14AM # Don’t Panic By [Gene Healy](https://www.cato.org/people/gene-healy) --- SHARE [John Mueller](http://www.cato-unbound.org/contributors/john-mueller/)’s new book is out; it’s called [*Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them*](http://www.amazon.com/Overblown-Politicians-Terrorism-National-Security/dp/1416541713). In it he expands on the argument he outlined in Cato’s [*Regulation Magazine* two years ago](https://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv27n3/v27n3-5.pdf) \[.pdf\], namely that that, while the terrorist threat is real, “it has been systematically and very substantially exaggerated.” (For more, see the recent [Mueller-led debate in *Cato Unbound*](http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/09/11/john-mueller/are-we-safer/).) This could be a very important book, with important implications for the way we discuss the terrorist threat and the right policies to respond to it. For one thing, if Mueller is right, and I think he is, it’s well past time to repudiate the idea that respecting constitutional limits is going to get us all killed (for example, the hoary soundbite [“the Constitution is not a suicide pact”](http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/08/conservatives-cheer-on-judge-posners.html)). Yet, strangely, not everyone appreciates Mueller’s good news. The first Amazon reader review of the book begins, “The problem with this book is its over-reliance on logic.…” ##### Related Tags [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).