Gone East

Don't Panic.

Thomas L. Friedman , op-ed piece in the New York Times:

In an open society, there are simply too many threats, too many openings and too many interactions that are built on trust. You can't even begin to secure them all without also choking that open society. Which is why the right response, after a point, is not to demand more and more security ? but to learn to live with more and more anxiety.

Because the question is not whether there will be more attacks. There will be. The question is whether we can survive them and still maintain an open society. What good is it to have Osama trapped in a basement somewhere if, by just whispering a few threats on Al Jazeera TV, he can trap us in self-sealed rooms?