Oh, so you're saying the speaker was saying " some terrorism as opposed to the curtailing of freedoms that would come from eliminating" [1] is preferable ? I

Oh, so you're saying the speaker was saying " some terrorism as opposed to the curtailing of freedoms that would come from eliminating" [1] is preferable ? I completely took it to mean: "I would prefer to live in the Islamic State, than in the USA with mass surveillance." Okay, well I'm undecided as to whether [1] would be preferable or not in the way it's phrased. What I have thought about tho is: - Yes we could eliminate terrorism, and it would take a lot of extreme measures ( that the West would be unlikely to get away with ) - But why should we eliminate terrorism, since from a purely political standpoint, it is quite useful. From any sufficiently emotive or divisive issue political motivation and utility can be extracted. For instance, the fear of terrorism helps the State advance legislation that it probably would not be talking about if we did not have terrorism. So the funny paradox I see is that, at this stage of human development, our States can actually benefit from using the spectre of terrorism to develop and advance themselves. Please take this in no way to mean justifying terrorism in any way...just to say that, IMHO, real politik dictates that terrorism has political benefits for the very State it is supposed to politically disadvantage.