In the mid-2000s, I co-ran an organization called Against the War on Terror. It was about six of us in New York City, running a blog, holding teach-ins and public debates, arguing that it wasn’t enough to be against the War in Iraq or Gitmo — the only progressive position was to be against the “war on terror” itself.

That war was the real threat to liberty, not just because it was a smokescreen to push all kinds of racist persecution of Muslims and more over-policing of minorities, but because of the way it substituted the politics of fear for an actual politics of freedom. It made security the basic principle of politics, and turned the pursuit of absolute security into a war — unhinged not just from institutional restraints but also from the restraints of limiting principles, like liberty.

The only way to enjoy freedom, we said, was to accept insecurity as a cost, a welcome cost, of living together with others who were also free.