Mainstream pundits publicly defended racial profiling as rational law enforcement.

Evidence

Political conservatives often argued—both in the harrowing days after September 11 and in the months and years following—that it was not possible to be both safe and free, that freedoms must inevitably be sacrificed in the interest of safety and security. These same critics typically argued that racial profiling was a reasonable and necessary method of law enforcement. Richard Cohen, for example, in the Washington Post, argued, “We have become driveling idiots on matters of race and ethnicity. One hundred percent of the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 mass murder were Arabs. Their accomplices, if any, were probably Arabs too, or at least Muslims. Ethnicity and religion are the very basis of their movement. It hardly makes sense, therefore, to ignore that fact and, say, give Swedish au pair girls heading to the United States the same scrutiny as Arab men coming from the Middle East.” — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 314

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how widely shared was the Cohen/Charen logic versus how much of it was amplified by editors choosing to feature these columnists?