This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, June 8, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown.

Terrorists want us to overreact, and American politicians are often more than willing

to provide that overreaction.

Often it comes in the form of policies that provide more political benefits than security benefits.

Ben Friedman, a research fellow in defense in and homeland security studies at the Cato Institute,

is co-editor of the new Cato book, Terrorizing Ourselves,

why U.S. counterterrorism policy is failing and how to fix it.

He spoke on Capitol Hill Hill May 25th.

Because this is a democracy, public demand for overreaction encourages over-wrought and wasteful

policies, policies that do more harm than good because of their costs,

because their costs always their benefit.

One such overreaction in my book was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security

itself, but I think that's a reaction that I think we're stuck with.

Another example I could give you is the changes in immigration policy in the United States

since 9-11, which have made it a lot harder for immigrants, including

very well-educated immigrants to enter the country just because we've added a lot of

hassle.

And I think that's kept out a large number of people who down the road might have started profitable

companies that would have employed a lot of people, people that would have gone into our universities

and contributed useful research and caused scientific innovation.

So we paid a very large cost for those restrictions and they're off the books.

There are an opportunity cost that we don't really see.

...