WHAT DO 167 DEATHS JUSTIFY?

By ROBERT WRIGHT

Of all the grim facts surrounding Oklahoma City, perhaps the grimmest is the one nobody talks about: against the backdrop of everyday American tragedy, 167 deaths is not many. Even if the darker fears now circulating were realized and this new form of murder began striking once or twice a year, the overall picture of violent death in America would barely change. In a typical year, guns kill 38,000 Americans and about that many die on our roads. These numbers routinely go up or down 2% or 3%-half a dozen Oklahoma bombings -- without making the front page.

Certainly the headlines from Oklahoma were warranted. Death comes not just in quantities but with qualities, and there was something uniquely terrifying about these 167 deaths. But since terror can drive policies-policies on how readily the government taps our phone lines or looks at credit-card records -- understanding it would be useful. If this sort of crime on a regular basis would scarcely change the amount of violence in the nation, why does America seem suddenly at risk? If your chance of dying wasn't appreciably raised by the bombing, why do you feel uneasy?

In a sense, it is natural that we worry irrationally -- that we are terrified by images of Americans "just like us" dying violently. The human mind evolved to assess and address risk on the basis of such images. But that's because during human evolution, before television, such images did reflect risk-local risk. Further galvanizing us is the fact that bombings are intentional; aspiring bombers are out there somewhere, to be stopped. Death by traffic mishap, in contrast, has no plan, no perpetrator. It seems the inexorable working of fate or chance, and we accept each year's statistics, if we notice them at all, with resignation.

Sounds rational, but it isn't. Whereas heading off the next bomber is a chancy business at best, we could, if we chose, adjust highway death downward with nearly the precision of a volume-control knob. We could better enforce speed limits, say, or close all bars at dusk. Implicitly, society chooses not to save lives this way. Drivers and drinkers would bridle at the inconvenience. Indeed, most states have raised the speed limit to 65 m.p.h. since 1987, adding an estimated 400 to 500 deaths a year nationwide.

That's defensible. Life is full of tough trade-offs between ease and safety, and we have to draw the lines somewhere. But do these trade-offs of convenience really warrant more reverence than trade-offs of civil liberty? If saving a few hundred lives-including children's lives-wouldn't justify a loss in highway efficiency, does it really justify growth of the government's power to eavesdrop and otherwise intrude on our lives?

Of course, the two trade-offs aren't strictly comparable. That qualitative dimension of death by bombing stubbornly persists. However I may argue for a cool assessment of horror, the fact remains that a single explosion scares people more than the background noise of highway death. Proposed anti-terrorist laws are in some sense aimed less at averting future deaths than at averting the ensuing fear. And, to be sure, quelling fear is a valid policy goal. The point is just that to whatever extent we can fight fear with reason, we should, because to that extent we can preserve our liberties.

This argument for restraint isn't rooted in casual disregard for the murderous technology of terrorism. Quite the contrary. It is because this technology grows ever more gruesome that we should guard against overreaction in general. If one truck bomb can ignite a frenzy of law-and-order politicking, imagine the authoritarian impulses the next generation of terror could unleash.

Lurking on the horizon of plausibility are biological weapons that can bring a quantum leap in the magnitude of tragedy and are easier to obtain than nuclear weapons. Thankfully, they are not yet available to the Timothy McVeighs of the world. But a terrorist cell much better funded and much more sophisticated than the Oklahoma City operation could conceivably use a car or small plane to fill a city with anthrax spores, killing tens of thousands, if not more.

Obviously, as these scenarios grow more likely, we have to think about expanding government surveillance. And the surveillance may involve the monitoring not just of terrorists but also of biotechnology firms and medical labs where weapons could stealthily take shape. The infiltration of your hospital or your daughter's medical school may sound spookier than spying on some fringe militia. That's good. Apathy about civil liberties is too easy when the freedom at stake is somebody else's.

The growing threats from biological and conventional weapons are part of the same trend: ever wider, ever cheaper access to technology. As this proceeds, America may find it has little choice but to sacrifice freedoms, incrementally but often, until finally it feels un-American. But if that is indeed the path down which technological evolution is carrying us, we should go kicking and screaming, and with our eyes wide open.