Numerous broadcasts over the last two days refer to September 11, 2001 as the day that "everything changed." This is not true.

Four flights were hijacked Tuesday of the many thousands that proceeded, or would have proceeded, normally. The perpetrators of the crimes used those four incidents to cause unimaginable damage. Thousands of families have felt the tremendous loss of one or more loved ones.

For all of those directly affected it can be argued that, indeed, everything has changed. But I propose that in fact, nothing has changed.

We live in a dangerous world, full of 4 billion people. Some have ideas vastly different from those that many Americans hold dear. For most of us, the risk of untimely death at the hands of others is small, much smaller than in much of the world. And we enjoy liberties that are the envy of many.

We must stand strong and united to preserve our liberties, and the benefits of a free society, to make it clear to forces of terror that their threats and actions cannot sway us from our beliefs in personal freedoms as they exist in the United States.

To restrict our own liberties as a consequence of these recent actions is to concede that, for now at least, the terrorists have won.


"Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759