It’s easy to pick out the most unsavory aspects of our history and claim that if not for the benevolent efforts of the state, we would still be mired in our own version of the Dark Ages. This strategy, however, conveniently ignores the fact that there is much more to American history than slavery, corruption, and sixteen-hour workdays.

The next time you hear someone fuming about conservatives and libertarians who “want to set us back 100 years,” consider whether it would be so horrible to live in a United States where – for example – there was no federal income tax, wars had to be explicitly declared by Congress, and the government could not just print up and lend out as much money as it desired.

Or for a different perspective, consider whether Americans 100 years ago would want to live in a country where:

• The government can secretly assassinate American citizens.
• The national debt exceeds the gross national product.
• A handful of undeclared wars are ongoing at any time.
• Federal agents can search their mail and tap their phones without a warrant.

In other words, the United States we live in today. Which America sounds better now?

Such a snapshot is obviously an incomplete portrait of life as we know it, and it would be unfair to condemn the 2012 United States on the basis of a few (substantial) shortcomings while ignoring its many accomplishments. It is likewise incorrect to judge the United States of years past based only on its faults.

As a rule, our society does not cheer on those who willfully ignore the information that will help them solve a problem. From a young age, children are taught to gather as many facts as possible before making a decision. Thoroughness and attention to detail are lauded in the workplace. In politics, however, these lessons are selectively applied. Too often, those who attempt to understand the motivations of anti-American terrorism are cast aside as naïve at best and disloyal at worst.

Understanding motive is an invaluable part of law enforcement. When someone is suspected of a wrongful act, one of the first steps we take is to try to find out why that person might have done it. So why does knowing all the facts suddenly become taboo when dealing with perhaps the most serious threat to our security?

If a man discovers that his wife has been unfaithful and proceeds to murder her, we do not absolve him of his moral and legal responsibility for the act. We condemn his behavior and punish it according to the law. But at the same time, we do not pretend that there was no connection between the victim’s infidelity and her husband’s crime. Recognizing the motivation behind the murder does not imply that it was justified. No one would equate acknowledgment of the circumstances leading to the act with blaming the victim or excusing the perpetrator’s behavior.

But this is exactly what takes place when we ask the very sensible question of what motivates thousands of people around the world to try to kill us. Where did this hatred originate? What exacerbates it, and what can we do to eliminate it? These are legitimate inquiries, yet earnest examination of them is discouraged. If knowing the answers to these questions will make us safer, shouldn’t we do everything in our power to seek them out? The bottom line is that shaping the facts to fit a more comforting narrative does nothing to protect us.

According to the United Kingdom’s Daily Telegraph, Libya’s interim leadership has declared that Sharia – the traditional Islamic code of law – will play an integral part in the country’s new judicial system.

In describing the upcoming changes, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council and de facto president, stated that Sharia will be the “basic source” of Libyan laws in the post-Gaddafi era. Bank regulations will prohibit the charging of interest, he said by way of example, and a law banning polygamy has already been struck down.

Sharia, of course, has been criticized frequently in the West and among liberal Muslims for what many feel is its oppressive approach to issues like homosexuality, freedom of speech, and the treatment of women.

This is the "new era of promise" that we have helped to bring about.

Few people would dispute that Gaddafi was a tyrant whose brutality toward his own people was indefensible. But do we know that the Libyan people will fare any better in this new era? For that matter, do we know that the United States will be any safer with this new regime in power? The answer, to both questions, is no.

A lot of people have justified the extrajudicial killing of Anwar al-Awlaki by saying it was basically an aberration – a unique situation where we needed to wipe out a terrorist threat and the guy we targeted just happened to be an American citizen. Surely these assassinations are not going to become a new trend, and the government would never carry out such an act unless it was absolutely necessary to the national defense.

Let’s put aside for a moment that the “emergency” rationale has been used to enable countless examples of bad policy, from the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Japanese-American internment camps to the 2008 bank bailout. The real cause for concern is that even if you accept the premise that this killing, just this one time, was ok, there is no guarantee whatsoever that the next one will be. And given the government’s history of taking a few hundred miles when given an inch, there is no reason we should trust it to restrain itself here.

By any measure, al-Awlaki was not a sympathetic figure. It’s easy to say “good riddance” to this one death in the faraway and war-torn Middle East, even if we aren’t entirely comfortable with how it took place. It’s easy to assure ourselves that the government wouldn’t dare kill a “real” American citizen, one who actually lived here and wasn’t plotting acts of terror against us. If any president ever thought of doing so, the potential public outcry and pure injustice of it would surely stop him in his tracks.

Unfortunately, we once said the same thing about the president making war.