Both the mes believe strongly in individual human beings; both the mes are suspicious of faceless, collective entities and enemies of coercion upon individuals; both the mes want most ardently to be left alone to think and be. There the resemblance stops. The me before believed in a lot of nonsense - the power of negotiation, for instance. Or that abundance and modernity could dull all tribalism, eradicate - in time - all fanaticism. That there was a primary cause for evil and that "evil" people weren't and only acted out of poverty or suffering or oppression.

I wasn't even aware of believing all this, but on 9/11/01 I was finishing my third published book and -- after a week of watching TV and baking obsessively and meeting my husband he drove across half the country to get back home from the place where he was on assignment at the time - when I returned to my manuscript these ideas seemed absurd. Reality had changed and my internal view had upended itself in those days of stunned shock.

It seemed obvious, glaringly so, that we'd been hit through no fault of our own. It seemed obvious and glaring that the ideology of the attackers, if allowed to prevail, would mean a terrible life for everyone. A world of nine elevens.

I've been accused of being cynical. I don't think of myself as such, but I confess I was only half surprised when people started pointing fingers at their own nation and saying we caused it. Some people always blame the victim. And some people hate themselves. But most people who blame us do so because if we caused it, we can stop causing it. They just wanted (and want) to go back to who and how they were then on that beautiful September morning.

Would I do that if I could? Oh, hell, yeah, in a heart beat. Since 9/11 I've lost friends; I've lost touch with relatives to whom I cannot explain why I'm different; I've become much more politically involved than I ever wanted to be; I've worried about my sons' future more than I thought I ever would: I've wondered if it's inevitable that both will get drafted when this war gets hotter. And if it's better or worse if they aren't. And most of all I've worried that when this is all over the America I love - sweet land of Liberty - will be gone forever.

But I know I can't go back. The event happened. That door is shut. The past is another country, and its borders are sealed against reentry. Even if the choices we have ahead of us all seem evil, some are better than others, and we must choose the least evil because we must go on living in the present and for the future. We can't hide. We can only trudge ahead, day by day, until eventually we find a path to another place, perhaps better than that past we lost.

One of the last discussions I had with the late Mrs. Heinlein was about the trade off between constitutional freedoms and survival of the nation, and how you can never be sure what you surrender "temporarily" will come back. But how we also cannot allow barbarism and terror to triumph.

Oh, yes, I would give everything I own to go back to five minutes before the first plane hit. Five minutes to bask in peace, to savor that golden September sunshine in the twilight of an era about to vanish forever. But it wouldn't work. I know now we were not at peace, but simply refusing to admit others were at war with us. Ostriches are not safe with their heads in the sand.

At the other end of twerpitude, of the starry-eyed innocence of youth if you will, lies not cynicism but adulthood. Adulthood has many disadvantages: there are bills to pay; there are dependents to protect and care for; there are obligations, commitments and things we really do not want to do, but must.

Only one things atones for and compensates for those burdens: liberty. Liberty is not freedom with which it's often confused. It doesn't mean you can do as you please.

It just means you have the facts and can choose your course in a perilous world. It means you know no course is perfect, but some are definitely better than others.

It means you wake up, you eschew the simple fairy tales that keep you sedated and happy - like the idea that if you close your eyes, nine eleven will never have happened, and everything will be fine. It means you lift your burden, assume responsibility for your course from now on, and you forge ahead.

And you tell evil it cannot pass and it cannot win. Because adults must protect the children and the weak. And adults do not let evil win without a fight. Even if the battle changes them forever.