In the mid-1960s, being an air hostess was considered to be a glamorous job. Back then, however, air stewardesses were paid less than half of what they make today. They also had to endure much longer flights, since 1960s airplanes carried relatively little fuel and had to stop for refueling. That also meant that flight attendants had to serve more meals and, consequently, worked harder during the flight. Most importantly, the likelihood of dying on the job declined substantially. In 1965, there were 1,142 airplane fatalities per 250 million passengers carried worldwide. Only 761 people died out of over 3 billion people who flew in 2014.

In 2010, Burma’s military junta–misnamed the State Peace and Development Council–began a controlled move toward limited democracy. The process was highly imperfect and there has been backsliding of late.

Nevertheless, national elections were held last week.

Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy annihilated the regime’s Union Solidarity Development Party, winning 78 percent of the seats. Voters rejected many top military and USDP leaders.

The losers were surprised that the people gave them so little credit for the end of dictatorial rule. “All of our calculations were wrong,” said one. Yet this happened before.

After ruthlessly suppressing pro-democracy demonstrations, the military regime sought to improve its image with an election in 1990. The NLD similarly won about 80 percent of the legislative seats. The embarrassed junta promptly voided the results, suppressed protests, and kept Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the last quarter century.

No one expects a similar response this time, however. The military made a far more calculated move toward democracy, writing the constitution to guarantee its influence. Moreover, after inviting in the West, the military could not easily return to isolation, the almost certain result of any electoral repudiation.

However, is the military prepared to allow reform to move forward?

Suu Kyi and the NLD face extraordinary challenges, made more difficult by people’s high expectations. People across Burma voted for The Lady, but she has never held office or participated in the give and take of politics.

She faces what remains an authoritarian state. Human Rights Watch recently warned that “the reform process has stalled.”

Much must be done. Civil and political freedoms must be further expanded. All members of parliament should be elected. Judges must be made independent and fair criminal procedures need to be established.

Moreover, power must be fully vested in civilians. Today, the Ministries of Defense, Border Affairs, and Home Affairs are formally under military control, while the army has seeded its personnel throughout the nominally civilian bureaucracy and judiciary.

Fundamental economic reform also is necessary. The Economic Freedom of the World index places Burma at a dismal 146 of 157 nations. Little progress has been made toward a market economy. The new government must make Burma attractive to domestic entrepreneurs and foreign investors alike.

Conflict continues among a number of ethnic groups. Peace requires allowing substantial self-government, creating trust after decades of military atrocities, and reintegrating ethnic and religious minorities in Burmese institutions.

Riots and massacres have continued in Rakhine State targeting the Muslim Rohingya, encouraged by radical Buddhist nationalists. The national government must protect vulnerable groups from organized violence.

Standing in the way of real change is the military-drafted constitution, which bars Suu Kyi from the presidency and requires a 75 percent vote in parliament to amend the constitution, while guaranteeing 25 percent of the seats to the military. Forging a relationship with the army while edging it aside will require extraordinary sensitivity.

Suu Kyi also must overcome her own limitations. Although a heroic figure who has suffered much for the cause of democracy, she has failed to delegate and develop a broad leadership within the NLD.

And her plan for governing sounds anything but inclusive: “The president will be told exactly what he can do. I make all the decisions, because I am the leader of the winning party.”

It has been more than a half century since the people of Burma have been able to rule themselves. They face tough questions of media freedom, political reform, economic liberalization, ethnic conflict, military accountability, and more.

As I argued on Forbes online: “For too long the Burmese people could only look to the future and hope for change. Today they have a chance to enjoy the opportunities that the rest of us take for granted. Hopefully now, after decades of conflict, the future finally has arrived for Burma.”

At the Washington Post online, Ilya Somin claimed that the Paris attacks gave “the Obama administration an opportunity to legalize its previously unconstitutional war against ISIS.” He continues, though invoking Article 5 may not appeal to the Obama administration it “is nonetheless the only sound legal justification for continuing the war against ISIS, unless and until the president gets a new authorization from Congress.”

International legal scholar Julian Ku disagreed, noting “Article 9 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that ‘[t]his Treaty shall be ratified and its provisions carried out by the Parties in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.’ (emphasis added).”

In response to Ku, Somin wrote: “in the event of an enemy attack on the US itself, the president has the legal authority to use force of his own volition, without additional congressional authorization.” And Article 5 “gives him the same authority to use force as he would have in the event of an attack on the United States itself.” Indeed, Somin enthused that “Empowering the president to assist an ally under attack without having to seek congressional authorization…makes the US commitment to defend its European allies more credible and certain.”

I am struck by Somin’s enthusiasm for allowing Barack Obama to circumvent the Congress’s war-making authority, and take the United States to war in Syria on account of attacks in France.

This is the same Barack Obama, mind you, who a number of scholars have criticized for exceeding his Constitutional authority. It seems particularly odd, given the importance that the Founders invested in the principle of legislative supremacy over the executive with respect to the war powers – Madison famously said that it was the most important passage of the entire document – that anyone, but especially advocates of limited, constitutional government, would be quick to make an exception in this case.

Will these advocates of greater executive power be now similarly inclined to allow the president to usurp a number of the other legislative powers enumerated in the Constitution? Should Obama be allowed to levy taxes and fees? Or initiate massive new domestic spending programs, independent of the Congress? Say, to implement a health care plan?

That is doubtful. What we are seeing, instead, is a manifestation of the fear-driven politics of the post‑9/​11 era, which has created a worrisome double-standard: presidents supposedly have nearly unlimited authority to send Americans abroad to be killed or maimed, but they are severely constrained when acting here at home. This attitude is perhaps best exemplified by Bush-era lawyer John Yoo’s claim that, in light of the supposedly uniquely dangerous threats confronting us today, “we should not…adopt a warmaking process that contains a built-in presumption against the use of force abroad.”

Actually, we should. The supposed dangers are precisely that: we do not live in a uniquely dangerous world. Americans today, in particular, enjoy a measure of safety that our ancestors would envy, and that our contemporaries do envy. Given this state of affairs, we should be extremely reluctant to intervene in others’ disputes when our vital interests are not directly threatened. And we should never forget that efforts to create a strong executive abroad will inevitably lead to a strong one at home.

The United States should maintain military power capable of deterring attacks against the United States, and fighting and winning wars when deterrence fails. That military will also be large enough to assist other nations in need, but the authority to deploy forces in that way should never be pre-delegated to circumvent the Congress – and, by extension, the people – of the United States.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou recently met in Singapore. Never before has Beijing treated the island’s government as an equal. It was a small step for peace, but the circle remains to be squared.

China insists that Taiwan is a wayward province, while the vast majority of Taiwanese feel no allegiance to the People’s Republic of China. If, as expected, Taiwan’s opposition presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen wins in January, relations between the two states are likely to shift into reverse.

The island of Formosa, or Taiwan, separated from the mainland when the Kuomintang government relocated to Taipei following the triumph of the Chinese Communist Party. Taipei continues to promote a separate identity.

The PRC insists that the island should return to Beijing. China’s growing power has encouraged its leaders to press Taiwan to accept some form of “one country, two systems.”

The PRC has hoped that closer economic and cultural ties would move the two countries closer to union. Yet Taiwan is steadily moving away from the PRC. More than 80 percent of Taiwanese back independence—if it would not trigger Chinese military action.

Now the KMT is likely to lose the presidency and possibly the legislature. The opposition is unlikely to enter into serious negotiations leading to reunification.

Which leaves the PRC’s Taiwan strategy in ruins. This likely explains President Xi’s decision to meet with President Ma. The former presumably hoped the meeting would encourage Taiwanese to vote for the KMT in order to further reduce cross-strait tensions.

What happens next remains up to the PRC. It has much at stake in maintaining a peaceful and stable order in East Asia. Nevertheless, nationalism runs deep and Taiwan is seen as part of China by most Chinese.

Moreover, Taipei is a security concern for Beijing, especially if allied with America. This concern may grow as the United States increasingly confronts Beijing over its territorial claims elsewhere in the region.

Washington traditionally has responded to cross-strait relations with “strategic ambiguity,” refusing to spell out its commitment to Taipei. But this is a dangerous gamble.

In the past, Taipei assumed Washington was committed to its security and Beijing assumed that the United States wouldn’t risk war over a distant, peripheral interest. The result could be an unnecessary, inadvertent crisis in which American officials must choose between abandoning Taiwan and fighting China.

Now, during a period of quiet, the United States should reconsider its policy toward Taiwan. As I point out in National Interest: “The island is a worthy friend, but Washington cannot justify risking Los Angeles for Taipei, as one Chinese general bluntly warned. Beijing might be willing to make the risky wager but it would be irresponsible for Washington to raise the stakes.”

Instead, it is worth considering creative bargains which might ensure Taiwan’s independence while satisfying Chinese interests. For instance, Washington should warn Taipei that the United States will not go to war on the former’s behalf. Taiwan should invest in a military sufficient to force China to pay a high price for any attempt at coercion.

The United States should warn the PRC that engaging in coercion against the island would impose a high economic price on Beijing and reduce China’s chances of taking on a greater regional and global leadership role. Washington also should encourage its Asian and European allies to communicate a similar message: while no one wants war with the PRC, no one could ignore an attack on Taiwan.

Washington could propose a Taiwanese neutrality declaration along with an American promise to forswear any military commitment to or bases on the island. In return, Beijing would reduce its threatening missile deployments and forswear military action against Taiwan. The United States could follow reduced tensions by shrinking its force presence elsewhere in the region.

There is no easy way to square the Taiwan circle, but the Ma-Xi meeting has created a better atmosphere, however limited, in which to explore a broader agreement including America that could encourage longer-term peace and stability. 

With Puerto Rico’s continuing fiscal strains, some commentators have suggested that one avenue to give Puerto Rico breathing room would be the purchase of Puerto Rican municipal debt as part of Open Market Operations by the Federal Reserve. The most prominent proponent of this plan is Rensselaer Tech Economics Professor Arturo Estrella. His proposal can be found here. The governance of Open Market Operations, which is the buying and selling of securities by the Federal Reserve System, is found in Section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act.

A threshold question is: does the debt of Puerto Rico qualify as allowable investments? There are essentially three categories of allowable purchases under Section 14: state/​local government debt in the continental United States, foreign government (or agency) debt; and U.S. Treasury or agency debt. Professor Estrella spends considerable effort arguing that Puerto Rico is within the definition of “continental” United States and hence qualifies. Unfortunately, his efforts are in vain as the Federal Reserve Act in Section 1 defines the “continental United States” to mean “the States of the United States and the District of Columbia” which obviously excludes territories like Puerto Rico.

How does Professor Estrella attempt to overcome the very clear language of the Federal Reserve Act? He argues that “the preponderance of regulatory language in Federal Reserve regulations shows that Puerto Rico is treated in the same way as a state…” The good professor offers plenty of examples, such as the Truth in Lending Act, carried out by the Fed’s Regulation Z. What he fails to mention is that the cited regulations are not carried out pursuant to the Federal Reserve Act. For instance, the Truth in Lending Act actually defines Puerto Rico as a state, which explains why Regulation Z as implemented does so. Congress regularly chooses different definitions of the same words for different statutes, and it does so intentionally. That, however, does not allow an agency to pick and choose. The definitions contained in a statute govern the regulations promulgated under that statute only.

Estrella also argues that since the Fed treats Puerto Rico as part of the New York Federal Reserve District, then it must be a state since Section 2 of the Federal Reserve Act established a procedure of allocating states to reserve bank districts. The essence of Estrella’s argument is that since the Fed treats Puerto Rico as a state in some contexts, then it must be classified as a state for purposes of Section 14. Such a view implies that an agency, like the Fed, can simply rewrite statutes at its whim. Such a view is, of course, incorrect. Only Congress can write statutes and while agencies can “fill in the blanks,” they cannot rewrite clear statutory language.

Interestingly enough, Professor Estrella also argues that Puerto Rico might qualify as a “foreign government,” since the International Banking Act of 1978 defines, for its purposes, Puerto Rican banks as “foreign banks,” although it does not include Puerto Rico under its definition of “foreign country.” One can debate the contradictory nature of the definitions of the 1978 Act, but they clearly do not apply to Section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act. Lastly, I believe it is obvious–and I do not know of anyone who has argued the contrary–that Puerto Rico is not part of the federal government or one of its agencies.

In summary, any plain reading of the Federal Reserve Act, along with the traditional practices of statutory interpretation, would conclude that the Federal Reserve cannot purchase Puerto Rican government debt as part of open market operations.

Even if the Fed were allowed to do so, would buying debt fix Puerto Rico’s problems?

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Puerto Rico qualifies as part of the continental United States. Section 14(2) limits any municipal purchases to maturities of less than six months at the time of purchase. While I have not been able to find a distribution of maturities for Puerto Rican debt, reports appear to indicate much longer maturities. Perhaps longer debt could be swapped out for six month, but such might leave Puerto Rico even more vulnerable as it would have to come to market far more often. Just as Bear Stearn’s reliance on overnight debt was part of its undoing, shortening the maturity of Puerto Rico would likely make a bad situation worse.

Perhaps most binding of all is that Section 14 is dependent upon “anticipation of the collection of taxes or in anticipation of the receipt of assured revenues…” In plain English, that means that lending is limited to debt that the Fed has determined there is revenue forthcoming. As Puerto Rico’s governor stated that the debt “could not be paid,” it is hard to see how the Fed could stay within the clear language and intent of Section 14 while purchasing Puerto Rico’s debt.

Let me be clear: I do not have answers to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. What I do know, however, is that having the Federal Reserve purchase Puerto Rico’s debt as part of open market operations is not legal. And if it was, it would likely be unworkable.

[Cross-posted from Alt‑M.org]

Of the 859,629 refugees admitted from 2001 onwards, only three have been convicted of planning terrorist attacks on targets outside of the United States, and none was successfully carried out. That is one terrorism-planning conviction for every 286,543 refugees that have been admitted. To put that in perspective, about 1 in every 22,541 Americans committed murder in 2014. The terrorist threat from Syrian refugees in the United States is hyperbolically over-exaggerated and we have very little to fear from them because the refugee vetting system is so thorough. 

The brutal terrorist attack in France last Friday reignited a debate over accepting refugees from Syria and the Middle East. A Syrian who applied for asylum could have been one of the attackers, although his passport was a forgery. (As of this writing, all identified attackers have been French or Belgian nationals.) Governors and presidential candidates have voiced opposition to accepting any Syrian refugees, while several bills in Congress could effectively end the program.

There are many differences between Europe’s vetting of asylum seekers from Syria and how the United States screens refugees. The geographic distance between the United States and Syria allows our government to better vet those seeking to come here, while large numbers of Syrians who try to go to Europe are less carefully vetted. A lax security situation there does not imply a lax security situation here. 

The Differences between Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Much of the confusion over the security threat posed by refugees is over the term “refugee” itself. It’s not yet clear how many foreign attackers in Paris entered Europe, but one or more may have entered disguised as asylum seekers. 

In the United States, asylum seekers show up at U.S. borders and ask to stay must show they have a well-founded fear of persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or their political opinion if they return to their country of origin. There is an application and investigation process, and the government often detains the asylum seeker during that process. But the investigation and vetting of the asylum seeker often take place while he is allowed inside of the United States. Many of the Syrians and others who have entered Europe are asylum seekers who are vetted through similar, less stringent security screens.

Refugees are processed from a great distance away and are more thoroughly vetted than asylum seekers as a result. In the United States, a refugee is somebody who is identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in a refugee camp. UNHCR does the first round of security checks on the refugee according to international treaties to which the United States is a party and refers some of those who pass the initial checks to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP). The referrals are then interviewed by a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officer abroad. The refugee must be outside the United States, be of special humanitarian concern to the government, demonstrate persecution or fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, and must not be firmly resettled in another country.

Because the refugee is abroad while the U.S. government checks their background, potential terrorist links, and their claims to refugee status, the vetting is a lot more thorough and can take up to two years for non-Syrians. For Syrians, the vetting can take about three years because of the heightened concerns over security. 

Asylum seekers, on the other hand, face rigorous checks, but they are conducted while the asylum seeker is inside of the United States and not always while he is in a detention center. Syrians fleeing violence who come to the United States will be refugees, whereas many getting into Europe are asylum seekers. This crucial distinction shows that the United States is in a far better security situation vis-à-vis Europe on any potential terrorist threat from Syrians.

The distinction between asylum seekers and refugees is usually lost when discussing the security threat from refugees. The father of Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev was granted asylum status, which conferred derivative asylum status on the children. None of the Tsarnaevs were ever refugees. 

Both Tamerlan and Dzokhar were children when they were admitted through their parents’ asylum claims. They did not adopt a radical interpretation of Islam or start plotting a terrorist attack until years after coming here. Their case does not reveal flaws in the refugee vetting process. There were some other terrorist attacks in the early 1990s from applicants for asylum status, but none of them were actual refugees. 

Security Screenings for Refugees

Deputy State Department Spokesman Mark Toner called the security checks for refugees “the most stringent security process for anyone entering the United States.” Coming here as a refugee requires numerous security and background checks that are more intense and invasive than for other migrants or visitors – which is partly why refugees have not successfully carried out terrorist attacks on U.S. soil (three have been convicted of attempting to carry out attacks abroad, there was one borderline case from a refugee who entered in 1997, and at least one other for a refugee who entered prior to 2001).

The first step for a refugee is to arrive and register in a UNHCR refugee camp outside of Syria. The UNHCR then refers those who pass the first stage of vetting to the U.S. government refugee process (as described above). The National Counterterrorism Center, the Terrorist Screening Center, the Department of Defense, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department use biometrics and biographical information gleaned through several interviews of the refugee and third-party persons who know him or could know him to make sure applicants really are who they claim to be, to evaluate their security risk, and to investigate whether they are suspected of criminal activity or terrorism. Numerous medical checks are also performed. During this entire screening process, which takes about three years for Syrians, the refugee has to wait in the camp. If there is any evidence that the refugee is a security threat, he or she is not allowed to come to the United States.

Refugee security screenings go beyond weeding out actual terrorists but also seek to identify those who provided material support to them. This material support standard is very elastic and weeds out many otherwise deserving refugees. Human Rights First claims that under current interpretations of the material support standard, Syrians would be turned away under all of these circumstances:

• A family who, while their residential neighborhood was being bombed by government forces, sheltered a wounded opposition fighter in their home;
• A boy who, after his father was killed, was recruited by opposition forces and, after serving with them for a time, left the conflict to join his mother and younger siblings in a neighboring country;
• The owner of a food stand in a neighborhood under opposition control from whom opposition fighters bought falafel sandwiches.

A refugee from Burundi was detained by DHS for 20 months for materially supporting a terrorist group because rebels beat him up, stole $4 from him, and took his lunch (it’s unclear from the story, but he might have been an asylum seeker). Many good candidates for resettlement in the United States are turned down for these silly reasons.

How Many Refugees Make It Here? How Many Are Syrians?

The UNHCR annually refers less than one percent of all refugees for resettlement. In 2014, they referred a mere 103,890 to all resettlement nations. That year, the United States accepted 69,933 refugees, or about 0.5 percent of the total number of all refugees in the world, but over 67 percent of all those referred by UNHCR. 

In 2015, the United States has accepted only 1,682 Syrian refugees, or 0.042 percent of the 4,045,650 registered Syrian refugees. Only one out of every 2,405 Syrian refugees in a camp was resettled in the United States in 2015. 

Evaluating the Risk

Few ISIS soldiers or other terrorists are going to spend at least three years in a refugee camp for a 0.042 percent chance of entering the United States when almost any other option to do so is easier, cheaper, and quicker.

If the United States still takes in 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016, and the number of refugees rises to 4.5 million, a mere 0.22 percent of them–one out of every 450–will be resettled in the United States. That number is still so small and the process so well monitored that potential terrorists are unlikely to see the refugee system as a viable way to enter the United States. 

Foreign-born terrorists tend to enter on student visas, tourist visas, business visas, or have asylum applications pending, or are lawful permanent residents. All non-immigrant or immigrant categories face fewer security and background screenings than refugees do. 

Of the 859,629 refugees who have entered the United States since 2001, three have been convicted for planning a terrorist attack abroad and exactly zero have perpetrated domestic attacks – that’s one conviction for every 286,543 refugees admitted. Focusing on the 735,920 refugees from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South Asia, that’s one conviction for every 245,307 refugees admitted. Just to hammer the point home, these are convictions for planning terrorist attacks abroad, not for carrying out actual terrorist attacks in the United States.

In 2015, 53 percent of the Syrians admitted were men, while only 41.5 percent of those men were between the ages of 14 and 40. Of all the Syrian refugees in that year, only 22.3 percent of them were men between the ages of 14 and 40. Terrorism-related convictions are almost always of men, so any risk-assessment should note the small number of men in the applicable age ranges. 

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that individual Syrian refugees are three times as likely to attempt terrorism in the United States than non-Syrian refugees because they are super-radicalized and very good at hiding it while waiting for years in refugee camps for their chance to strike. Assuming this fantasy is true, the United States can expect to convict a single Syrian refugee for attempting a terrorist attack for every 95,514 of them allowed in as refugees. There are many more convictions for attempted terrorism than successful terrorist attacks. Without even attempting to estimate the damage caused by such hypothetical terrorist attacks, it’s clear that the present political panic and calls for a moratorium on refugee admissions from Syria are totally unwarranted.

This situation may be different in Europe, where 681,713 Syrian asylum seekers have sought refuge since the beginning of their civil war in 2011. So far, one of them may have participated in the Paris terrorist attack, and that is far from clear. 

John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart have been critical of counterterrorism agencies that “simply identify a source of harm and try to do something about it, rather than systematically thinking about the likely magnitude of harm caused by a successful terrorist attack, the probability of that attack occurring, and the amount of risk reduction that can be expected from counterterrorism efforts.” These criticisms could easily apply to the U.S. refugee vetting process. To my knowledge, there has been no systematic evaluation of the costs and benefits of this refugee vetting process. The marginal costs of outlays and security procedures may exceed the marginal benefits, but that means we have even less to fear from those refugees admitted even if the price we pay for that safety is irrationally high.

There is also a risk from not letting in more Syrian refugees that policymakers should consider. Syrians could languish in refugee camps for years or decades to come unless the Turkish government suddenly becomes more classically liberal and hands out millions of work permits. There is one clear lesson from the limited academic literature on this issue: Allowing the current UNHCR refugee camp situation to grow and fester for years can only produce more radicalization and terrorism. A more expansive refugee policy with adequate security checks that resettles large numbers in safe countries can drain the swamp of potential future terrorists and decrease that risk.

Where the Refugees Are Settling in the United States

The pace of Syrian refugee admissions is scheduled to pick up in 2016 unless Congress prevents it. In October 2015, the government took in 187 Syrian refugees and settled them in several states (Figures 1 and 2). 

Figure 1

Syrian Refugees Resettled in October 2015 by State

Source: U.S. Refugee Processing Center.

Figure 2

Other Refugees Resettled in States with Syrians October 2015

Source: U.S. Refugee Processing Center.

In October 2015, Syrians were approximately 3.6 percent of all refugees admitted, and many states didn’t even receive any (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Syrian and Other Refugees by State

Source: U.S. Refugee Processing Center.

From the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011 through the first month of the 2016 fiscal year, a mere 0.63 percent of all refugees admitted to the United States were Syrians, or about 2,070 out of 329,856 (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Syrian and Other Refugees Admitted Since 2011

Sources: U.S. Department of State and U.S. Refugee Processing Center.

Conclusion

The security threat posed by refugees in the United States is insignificant. Halting America’s processing of refugees due to a terrorist attack in another country that may have had one asylum-seeker as a co-plotter would be an extremely expensive overreaction to very minor threat. Resettling refugees who pass a thorough security check would likely decrease the recruiting pool for future terrorists and decrease the long-run risk.

The current refugee vetting system is multilayered, dynamic, and extremely effective. ISIS fighters or terrorists who are intent on attacking U.S. soil have myriad other options for doing so that are all cheaper, easier, and more likely to succeed than sneaking in through the heavily guarded refugee gate. The low level of current risk does not justify the government slamming that gate shut.

When something as horrific as last Friday’s Paris attacks unfolds on the news, it’s hard not to feel that the world is a very dangerous place. It’s hard to remember that what makes acts of terror, such as the one in Paris last week, so shocking and newsworthy is that violence is becoming rarer. In fact, the vast majority of human interactions are peaceful.

Esteemed journalist and Human​Progress​.org advisory board member Matt Ridley put it well when he said, “violence makes the news precisely because it is so rare; routine kindness does not make the news precisely because it is so common.” Harvard University’s Steven Pinker, who is also one of our board members, observed,

We never see a reporter saying to the camera, “Here we are, live from a country where a war has not broken out”—or a city that has not been bombed, or a school that has not been shot up. […] The only sound way to appraise the state of the world is to count.

And if we judge how violent the world is by counting, instead of by how gruesome the headlines are, we find something heartening. International wars have almost disappeared. Homicides are becoming rarer. In the United States, violence against women is decreasing, and so is child abuse.

Almost everywhere, we see a trend away from violence. Progress, sadly, is neither linear nor inevitable. Setbacks do occur. Terrorism is one of the few areas where violence is becoming worse, although it remains rare. For example, you are much more likely to die of a disease, in an accident, or from an ordinary homicide. 

To meet the challenge posed by terrorism the rest of the world may need to think outside the box. Even one violent death is too many. Still, we must not lose sight of the fact that though some violent fanatics may stand athwart the trend towards greater peace and tolerance, violence is slowly retreating.