Civil liberties in the age of terrorism

Do modern societies need to curtail civil liberties to adapt to the post 9/11 world? Christopher Caldwell argues that it is impossible and dangerous for people to have the same liberties that they did before we started to live in the age of terrorism in an article in the Sunday Times. I don't agree with him, but he makes an interesting argument nonetheless. Gary Becker makes the same point in the Becker-Posner blog by arguing the balance has shifted away from civil liberties to security. Sandy Levinson takes a different, which I share entirely. What separates Modern and democratic societies from ones which aren't are civil liberties. To argue that security means less civil liberties is to argue the most important value of modern societies is self-preservation. However, it is precisely civil liberties, which enable modern societies to overcome terrorism and to subsist.