Our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show’s viewership.

The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn’t make us any safer.

Bruce Schneier: Refuse to be Terrorized

I have cynically accepted that the terrorists have already won – our nation is bankrupt, our economy in shambles, our infrastructure is crumbling, and our people live in constant fear. (And to top it off, Osama bin Laden was never brought to justice.) But maybe it’s not to late to refuse to be terrorized.