I hate to ruin the punchline, but there is a fascinating op-ed in the NYT called “Bush’s Dangerous Liaisons” that compares the current US administration to French Revolutionaries:

To defend the nation from its enemies, Jacobins expanded the government’s police powers at the expense of civil liberties, endowing the state with the power to detain, interrogate and imprison suspects without due process. Policies like the mass warrantless searches undertaken in 1792 — “domicilary visits,” they were called — were justified, according to Georges Danton, the Jacobin leader, “when the homeland is in danger.”

[…]

Though it has been a topic of much attention in recent years, the origin of the term “terrorist” has gone largely unnoticed by politicians and pundits alike. The word was an invention of the French Revolution, and it referred not to those who hate freedom, nor to non-state actors, nor of course to “Islamofascism.”

A terroriste was, in its original meaning, a Jacobin leader who ruled France during la Terreur.

Good reading. I checked wikipedia (where else?) for the etymology and found this nugget:

A leader in the French revolution, Maximilien Robespierre, proclaimed in 1794, “Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country’s most urgent needs.”

The footnote suggests this fact comes from Mark Burgess, A Brief History of Terrorism, Center for Defense Information. Further reading led me to a poem called Robespierre by Georg Heym, translated by Antony Hasler:

He bleats, but in his throat. The bland eyes stare
into the tumbril’s straw. Sucking, he draws
the white phlegm through his teeth from chewing jaws.
Between two wooden struts a foot hangs bare.

At every jolt the wagon flings him up.
The fetters on his arms rattle like bells.
Mothers hoist their children up, and yells
of cheerful laughter cross the rabble’s top.

Someone tickles his leg. He does not see.
The wagon stops. He looks up. At the end
of the street he sees the last black penalty.

Upon the ash-grey brow the cold sweat stands.
And in the face the mouth twists fearfully.
They wait for screams. But no one hears a sound.

It would seem history shows people often confuse terrorism with the principles of security and safety.