Debunked: Ten Conservative Myths About National Security

By Sara Robinson
September 12th, 2008 - 1:59am ET

True confession: I was terrified on 9/11—for all the right reasons.

I wasn't afraid of the terrorists. There are plenty of countries where people have lived for decades under the constant threat of unholy acts of terror—and yet people still get on buses and subways and airplanes, and life goes on. I'd like to think that Americans are at least as courageous as Israelis or Indonesians. Our "land of the free and home of the brave" mythos insists we should be. So I was damned if I was going to respond to the crisis by giving into irrational fears and thereby, as we used to say, "let the terrorists win."