Echoes of Fear

I'm reading a book called Hope in Troubled Times: A New Vision for Confronting Global Crises, and it's especially interesting in light of reading Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear. It talks a lot about ideologies, defining them as consisting of three elements: 1) they have an absolutized political or societal end, 2) they require a redefinition of currently held values, norms, and ideas that legitimize in advance the practical pursuit of the predetermined end, and 3) they establish a standard by which to select the means or instruments necessary for effectively achieving the all-important goal. (p.33)

Looking at identity ideologies that develop when identity is threatened, the authors point to militant Islamists, the terror of the Gaza strip, and the lessons of apartheid and Nazism. These all seem like impossible progressions of the 'American Dream', but our nationalist identity could indeed be slinking towards ideology, just look at Guantanamo Bay and the treatment of prisoners there (although the recent Supreme Court ruling is, I believe, a step in the right direction). To start treating people as less than human may be pragmatic and even somewhat effective as a means to an and (although even that is questionable), but at what price? Is it okay for us to redefine our morals in the pursuit of self-preservation, or is the Christian call radically risky?

Here's an interesting paragraph from the book that sort of sums it up:

During difficult times democracy falters and the national urge for a strong leader and tighter security returns... When self-preservation becomes our highest goal, then we deem whatever contributes to it as strong and whatever detracts from it as weak. Further, the all-encompassing desire for self-preservation can lead us to redefine good and evil, whereby good becomes whatever preserves us and evil becomes whatever threatens us. In the aftermath of September 11, did not President Bush declare, in a paraphrase of John 1:15, that 'the light [America] has shone in the darkness [the enemies of America], and the darkness will not overcome it'? These words have echoes of a nationalist ideology. If this ideological impulse is allowed to progress, its cures will be worse than the illness, and the means for maintaining order will slip out of control. And then it will be too late. (p. 82)

So what do y'all think? Do you see the new American doctrine of preemption as a 'necessary evil' or a step along a dangerous path? As a nation do we have a responsibility to protect ourselves, and how far does/should that protection take us? It's murky sometimes, I know, and I'm curious how y'all feel about it.