(or more accurately, take my remote chances of dying in a terrorist attack), than live in a police state.
Which do you 'prefer': a vanishingly small chance of being killed in a terrorist attack or a 100% chance of living every single moment in a grey, paranoid, war-loving police state?
I'd rather live and die like a free human being than be fed constant lies, unable to speak my mind, living at the mercy of great, grey bureaucracies.
In the coming few years, technology will enable a nearly airtight police state based on continuous surveillanbce and networked databases. Further down the road, it's not beyond the realm of possibility to envision all sorts of even more sinister biological, chemical, electronic manipulations of consciousness itself - ways to make thoughtcrime impossible. Again, such developments cannot be easily dismissed.
How I wish we could break the taboo about needing to be "tough" on all forms of terrorism. I wish we could admit that small scale conventional attacks are relatively unavoidable - and relatively harmless. They will not bring the republic down. Only fear of them will. We should NOT have a foreign policy based on trying to end conventional terrorism.
As far as unconventional terrorism, I'm all for a far more aggressive posture. One based on finding actual potential terror groups (as opposed to intimidating citizens) and keeping materiel/know how/technology from them. But our foreign policy now is making an unconventional attack far more likely.
My larger point: I am willing to die for freedom, for human dignity. Starting wars, sending people to war, supporting wars does not make one brave. We all have the opportunity for bravery and to weigh our lives against the blessings of true freedom.
Would you rather be free than have (illusory, at that) security?