I have a piece coming out soon on 9/11, which transpired when I was eight years old. I’ll be writing about how at the time it was sort of abstract and curious to me—terrorists flying airplanes into buildings was no more “real” to me than imagining my toy soldiers as cowboys and Indians or Nazis and GIs.

It was only years later that it sort of settled in that our country was different, permanently. That’s one reason I have understood the concern that COVID measures will never quite go away, though they have, and I thought they were necessary. Nonetheless, there seems to be something to the idea that it easier to lose liberties than to gain them back, and easier to grow government than to shrink it...