You sound like you're not just reacting, like your hormones are tempered with your thoughts.

I think everything you're going through - and, of course, you've got some company - just proves you've got a soul. And now you're searching it.

This mess has depressed me, too. The tragedy, as Giuliani has said, is more than we can bear. Yet what is to follow may exact a still higher price. American lives lost in a ground war in the forsaken landscape of Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern lands. And, perhaps dearer still, the freedoms of which you and the man with the kite spoke so wisely.

To me, too, this has the potential to be the greatest loss of all. If terrorists attacked America's way of life, and if the response is that the land of the free and the home of the brave becomes less free and less brave, haven't the terrorists accomplished exactly what they set out to accomplish? And hasn't America responded thoughtlessly, without consideration for the lives already spent centuries ago to win those very freedoms?

No, I'm not looking forward to a land of wiretaps and ID cards either. I have no problem with the Air Marshals. But the more places I get to hear the phrase, 'Papers, please,' in - well, the less I'm going to feel like America actually won any of its wars.