Talk of an “age of terrorism” after 9/11 was enervating to me, because it signaled that cascading fear and self-interest would drive countless misbegotten policies in Washington. The role I adopted—always glib—was working to “protect the nation from counterterrorism.”

Terrorism is a strategy of the weak that does its work by inducing overreaction on the part of the victim state. Ours was no exception, and we wasted far too much American blood and treasure as a consequence.

So I was gratified by the material Foreign Affairs pushed out to readers ahead of the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks:

After 25 years, the United States may finally be closing a chapter that began with the attacks on September 11, 2001, and President George W. Bush’s declaration of a “war on terror” days later. Although “terrorism has not ceased” and “jihadism has not gone away,” al-Qaeda, the group responsible for the attacks, “is finished,” Audrey Kurth Cronin writes. So is the war on terror, the “guiding framework for U.S. foreign policy” for the last quarter century, Philip Gordon contends.

Professor Cronin participated in a research project colleagues at the Cato Institute and I conducted in the 2000s, culminating in an edited volume, Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It. Cronin is a more circumspect scholar than our title suggests, but our aim was to draw attention to terrorism as a strategy. We wanted to advertise the aggressively levelheaded responses that counter it. Yes, aggressively levelheaded. You must stay on your ideological and legal moorings.

The end of a misbegotten era is interesting to watch. Part of the slow recession in overwrought counterterrorism rolled out this week, when the Transportation Security Administration announced that people at select airports will be able to walk loved ones to their gates. (Kids, you used to be able to do this all the time. Kids, you used to be able to arrive at the airport 15 minutes before your flight.)

I saluted another instance a year ago, when Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem announced that people would no longer need to remove their shoes at airport security checkpoints. I used the opportunity to discuss transportation security risk management.

Travel by air is much safer than travel by automobile. Air security measures that don’t concretely protect airplanes push people into auto trips, where they are more likely to die or suffer grievous injury. “Over two decades,” I said at the time and still believe, “millions of would-be flights have been switched to drives, and likely tens or hundreds have died.”

What are the inputs to more levelheaded counterterrorism? One is the political environment. As I said when DHS ended its “shoes-off” policy,

The current administration has a sort of machismo (among men and women both) that allows overwrought airline security procedures to be revamped. Much as Nixon could go to China because of his toughness on communism, the Trump administration can handle a little more risk—a little more balance—and lead us to airline security policies that save more lives by further opening the skies.

Another is time. Passage of time without major attacks has simply eroded the salience of terrorism while teaching that there were not mastermind villains massing against us but rather a band of ragged nitwits that enjoyed tremendous luck one late summer day.

A generation has grown up without their elders’ acute memory of the 9/11 attacks. That is for the good, as rational policies can filter back in. “Rational” is a charitable word for political and regulatory outcomes that parallel what serious risk analysis would produce.

As I did a year ago, I will renominate an errant policy for revision. That is the national ID program established by the REAL ID Act.

Serious analysis shows that it has little effect beyond inconvenience to any dedicated attacker. But by herding Americans into a national ID system, it imposes on privacy and ultimately threatens the liberty of law-abiding Americans. Since I wrote, the DHS has instituted a surcharge for traveling without one’s national ID. Progress is uneven.

Above I talked about being “levelheaded.” Among the topics I researched relating to terrorism and counterterrorism was the plasticity of the brain. My surmise is that many of us suffering repetitive exposure to the images of the 9/11 attacks trained our brains to fear.

It’s possible to overcome fear. It’s possible to be confident about our security, our country, its people, and our traditions. Though our country has been relatively small and scared (and macho) for the recent quarter century, I am confident that rising generations will restore America to its preeminent place in the world, making us what President Ronald Reagan—an opponent of a national ID—called a “shining city upon a hill.”