Ta-Nehisi Coates on the New York Police Department’s profiling of Muslim student populations throughout the northeastern U.S.:

If you follow the logic through it basically justifies a municipal police department spying on anyone who ever headed a Muslim Students Association anywhere in the United States. When you consider that in many cases these informants weren’t even investigating a crime, or building a case, that they were just spying, and the obvious incentive to “find” a case, Browne’s words are chilling. …

This where you see the really long-term effects of terrorism. It’s not simply the number of people you murder, it’s how the smallest act can alter the character of a nation.

Read his full commentary here.