Some people will die? We're all going to ...

So Admiral McConnell says:

"The fact we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die, because . . . the more we talk about it, the more [the bad guys] will go with an alternative means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said..."

Which is just the latest in a line of hand-wringing, fear-mongering speeches about how the most important thing in the universe is staying alive.

I got news for us. Everybody dies. What really matters is how we live.

Do we live like Americans, or do we throw away all our ideals and convictions and just try to eke out mere, (in delicious irony) Darwinian survival? Do we deserve to be saved if we turn into our enemies? As Ben Franklin said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Or, as Sarah Vowell put it:

"Whenever I hear the president mention, oh, every 12 minutes, that his greatest responsibility is ''to protect the American people,'' the insufferable civics robot inside my head mutters: ''Actually, sir, your oath, the one with the Bible and the chief justice and the Jumbotron, is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. For the American people are not mere flesh whose greatest hope is to keep our personal greasy molecules intact; we, sir, are a body politic -- with ideals.''