Oh, no!

I wanted the piece to end with "You'll shoot your eye out!" But what they'll really argue is that this will be destabilizing.

What's more destabilizing is the recognition that our nuclear arsenal is not a serious threat:

That terrifying capability was designed to contain Soviet adversaries. But as the Cold War recedes into memory, U.S. strategists worry that our nuclear threat is no longer credible — that we are too muscle-bound for our own good. Are we really prepared to wipe out Tehran in retribution for a single terrorist attack? Kill millions of Chinese for invading Taiwan? The answer is no.

I thought of this just after 9/11. I'm glad someone else has too.

But no matter how many times we kill a guilty person, the emphasis in the press will be on the "innocent" victims. Terrorism is like a cancer. If you don't attack it, it'll get you, but there's also a risk that the treatment will too.

The only technology I can think of that would work to stop terrorism would be a device for mind reading. I don't see that happening. The only real chance we have is conversion, something America seems to have been singularly bad at. Someone suggested, as a joke, that we drop millions of Arabic translations of the Book of Mormon. But if we're living in the last days, I doubt that even that would save us.

Mark Steyn makes a pretty good case that we'll never achieve the great things science predicts because we'll just run out of people who care to make any of them happen.