Most evils are not dramatic attention-getters. Martha Nussbaum's contrast of terrorism with poverty may be true. But how would we know? The ability to make that observation seems to presuppose a high-profile paradigm of terrorism, at least that terrorism is as visible as poverty. Yet terrorism is far commoner than its high-profile paradigms suggest. Most of it is not very public and is not identified or documented as terrorism. Under oppressive regimes, in racist environments, in organized crime, in inner cities policed by gangs, and in the everyday lives of women, children, and elders everywhere who suffer routine violence in their own homes, systematic uses of terror degrade the environments of ordinary people without capturing any more public attention than most poverty does.

High-profile paradigms include the French Resistance, British carpet-bombings during WW ii, activities of the Weather Underground in the United States and the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany during the 1970s, and even ongoing anti-abortion terrorism in the US. But most terrorism is very low profile, unspectacular, except to those who suffer it. It is mostly executed with no pretense to justification or moral excuse. The ­previous chapter focused on international terrorism, which is relatively high profile.