Terrorism: cause of misery or consequence of misery? Ashcroft and others grapple with it at the World Economic Forum. I had to smile at Ashcroft's saying, "`I'm not willing to say we have to downplay values we believe in to appease the terrorists." However, changing our values to appease our own government, that's okay. In other words, we can't give up the right of habeas corpus because terrorists force us to, but it's okay to give it up to keep them from "winning."



It's simple: the more freedom we have, the more goodwill we will be able to draw on, both among our own citizens and around the world. That's the single best bulwark against a threat as diffuse as terrorism. We must remember that terrorists are an extremely small group, and cannot change the world on their own; only we can do that for them, through fear or revenge or unintended consequences.



The blog will get less serious soon, I promise.