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One of the principal effects of 9/11 was instilling in Americans a fear that their personal security was at greater risk than ever before. Many aspects of the post-9/11 world are indeed new, but the fear it evokes echoes that felt by prior generations. At times the country has met those fears while still holding fast to its core democratic principles. Other times, fear has overruled American principles, especially the protection of individual freedoms. The most important legacy of the American experience following 9/11 will not be the novelty of fear, but rather how well the country copes with that fear while adhering to its constitutional framework.Given how searing the 9/11 experience was, it is sometimes hard to remember that prior generations of Americans didn't always sleep soundly either. Pearl Harbor is an often-cited example, but it joins many other moments of intense fear in U.S. history. During the 40-plus years of the Cold War, American school children practiced "duck and cover" drills the way today's kids might practice school lock-downs. As a teenage in the 1980s, I joined Sting in hoping we could avert a nuclear holocaust if "the Russians love their children, too."With the collapse of the Soviet Union, other threats in the United States soon appeared: the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing, to name just a few. During the 1990s, some in the military liked to refer to the United States as a "homeland sanctuary;" after 9/11, many talk about the end of that sanctuary.True, the country has experienced fewer external threats to its population than have most other nations. But it's a misconception to think that the American sense of external threat is new.The experience of those who lived through 9/11 needs to create which of the following outcomes, according to the author of the passage?A. Citizens should not let their fear of another terror attack override the country's ability to adhere to the civil liberties protections outlined in the Constitution.B. Citizens need to acknowledge that the 9/11 attack was a unique event and work to develop a new strategy to combat future terror attacks.C. Citizens have to be willing to sacrifice some civil liberties in order to protect the country from future terroristic attacks.D. Citizens can rely on the government to develop plans to protect them in the event of a future attack on the United States.

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