It has become a truism that Sept. 11 "changed everything." Who would dispute that our country today is radically different from the America we lived in before the attacks? These sudden deaths convinced most Americans that we were "at war." That conviction made possible not only the immediate retaliation against Afghanistan, but the war in Iraq, even though we now know that the Iraq invasion was unjustified by any threat posed to the United States by Saddam Hussein or by ties to Al Quaeda. At home, opinion polls indicate that most Americans will willingly sacrifice some freedom in exchange for security, and, sure enough, our civil and privacy rights have been drastically reduced as a result of the Patriot Act. Most tellingly of all, we have just passed through a presidential campaign that contrasted a vision of hope and a vision of fear. In the end, the fearful vision prevailed.

It is impossible to know exactly what fear feels like to an elk as it scans the hills, looking for the sight of an onrushing wolf pack. But it must be a very, very bad feeling -- bad enough for the elk to change its way of life in order to avoid that fear. This, it seems, is what we are trying to do. But the more we try to escape fear, the more it pursues us.