The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, a truth that we are reminded of too often in too many ways.
The terror attacks that struck New Orleans in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day and, possibly, Las Vegas later in the day, are a terrible reminder that our world is filled with twisted fanatics who believe murder is a means to change the world in their own image.
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It isn’t, and it never can be. As a country we are left to mourn again the innocent who did not deserve to die. And we again feel the fear we have known from before.
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Those of us who were alive when terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, remember the shattering of an innocence, a sense that we weren’t vulnerable the way other nations were vulnerable.
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We know that isn’t true now. With the loss of that innocence has also come a deeper wisdom about the nature of terror. It still has the power to shock and horrify us. But it doesn’t change our essential nature or our commitment to an open and plural society.
The 42-year-old Texas man who rammed his truck through a crowd of people just out on Bourbon Street to celebrate the New Year was reported to be carrying an Islamic State flag.
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Of all the heinous terror groups in the world, this one seems to hate human freedom most of all. It despises the values we hold most dear: freedom of expression, of assembly, of religion.
Federal agents reportedly do not believe this terrorist acted alone, and we are confident they’ll follow every lead to get to anyone else with responsibility.
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The United States has always sought to bring to justice those who kill its citizens, whether here or abroad. We owe that to the victims in New Orleans, and we owe it to anyone who took part in this brazen act of terror.
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As ever, policies and practices engaged to keep the public safe must be given a full review, even as we acknowledge that an open society always has a vulnerability to terror because terrorists seek places where they can hurt the most exposed innocent people they can find.
Most of all, once more, we need to be resolute and united as a people. We have our differences. But we have a greater sense of shared purpose and shared values, a commitment to human freedom, to self-determination, to the sacred rights protected under our Constitution.
Those were the rights good people were exercising in the Crescent City, reveling in the joy of a new year.
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Terrorists and other fanatics hate that joy. They hate that freedom. They would take it if they could. They cannot. They lack the power.
They can hurt us. But they cannot defeat us because we are a nation determined to be free.
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New Orleans terrorist has hurt us, but terror can never defeat us
