”It’s not the free and open democratic society that aspires to eliminate risk; it’s the police state. The police state does not succeed. I spent four years in the Soviet Union and, occasionally, there were incidents of political violence: we didn’t hear about most of them. But they occurred here and there, and if there had been a real movement in that country that wanted to use political violence, I don’t think it would have been possible for the KGB secret police to prevent all incidents at 100 percent. You just can’t do it. In a modern society, particularly where people are mobile, where people have vehicles that they can load up with explosives, or people go to public areas and are willing to wear explosive vests and blow themselves up, it’s impossible to reduce risk to zero. So, the question is: “How much risk are you willing to tolerate to have a free society?” That’s not a calculation that’s really mathematical. It’s psychological. It’s really hard to come to a clear conclusion about it, because as individuals, or even as a society, you have less power over this than you may imagine you do.

David Shipler (via azspot)