I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS INTERVIEW OF NEAL STEPHENSON by Mike Godwin in Reason to go online, and now it has. Here’s what I think is a key bit:

Speaking as an observer who has many friends with libertarian instincts, I would point out that terrorism is a much more formidable opponent of political liberty than government. Government acts almost as a recruiting station for libertarians. Anyone who pays taxes or has to fill out government paperwork develops libertarian impulses almost as a knee-jerk reaction. But terrorism acts as a recruiting station for statists. So it looks to me as though we are headed for a triangular system in which libertarians and statists and terrorists interact with each other in a way that I’m afraid might turn out to be quite stable.

That, in fact, is why I see it as important to win the war. I think that the best thing for civil liberties in America is that we’ve gone over 3 years without another 9/11 style attack. (And note an example of Stephenson’s dynamic, here.)