But I think we need to take it seriously enough to say that there are obviously people who would like to be provocative, hope that there is not just a reaction but there is an overreaction, then people blame the people who overreact and the situation gets out of control".
One of the acts, the alien enemies act, was used by Franklin D Roosevelt to intern Japanese Americans during the second world war, another egregious example of government overreaction in the name of security.
"This is a complete and utter overreaction by Labor".
Related: The demonisation of Ed Miliband is reason enough to vote out the Tories | Owen Jones Now, you may think this is a gross overreaction on my part.
The overreaction –"terrific clamour" – "loud quarrel, world-wide" – recalls the way creatures behave in traditional animal fables when excited by raw need or vanity.
Gross overreaction by the police against suspected Islamist extremists on the coast, involving extrajudicial killings, has served only to recruit more people to the extremists' cause.
But it also led to several regulatory changes for the worse, among them the Glass-Steagall and McFadden acts, which weakened American banks for several decades without making either them or the markets significantly safer in the long run.There is a risk of a similar regulatory overreaction today.
But bubbly asset prices do risk overreaction from rich-world central bankers.
But the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation on corporate governance is regarded by many businessmen as an overreaction.
My own view, based on the arguments above, is that the central banks are justified in waiting for more data before concluding that the rise in commodity prices is permanent.Paul Krugman likes Mr Davies's column but thinks the main problem is still overreaction to commodity-price fluctuations rather than the reverse.
For perceived "troublemakers" such as Mr Ai, the government says, "no law can protect them".Western observers tend to describe the crackdown as a massive overreaction to perceived threats, but it may well be that China's rulers know better.
