In a free country, no major event can ever be hardened enough so that it is completely and absolutely secure.

The decision to postpone the Sugar Bowl for at least 24 hours after the terrorist atrocity in the early hours of New Year’s Day was the right one. At that moment, no one yet knew whether Shamsud-Din Jabbar had attacked alone when he drove his truck down Bourbon Street in a murderous rampage. There were reports of improvised explosive devices planted around the French Quarter, and, most ominously, no one yet knew whether the car explosion at the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas was related. The jihad was back — of that, we could be certain — but what was the extent of its current campaign on American soil?

I’m now very glad to see that the correct decision has been made to play the Sugar Bowl today in New Orleans. If city, state, and federal officials are reasonably confident that they can secure the venue — as they say they are — then it’s incumbent on Americans to proceed with living their lives as free men and women.

Mark Schlabach, a senior writer for ESPN, reports on the security preparations in NOLA:

“I want to [assure] people that right now in the city of New Orleans, there’s an unprecedented amount of law enforcement resources that are being utilized to close out and to hunt down and finalize this investigation,” [Louisiana governor Jeff] Landry said.

Landry said members of the Louisiana National Guard, as well as correctional officers and members of other state law enforcement divisions have been deployed to the city to help with security. . . .

Numerous security officers around the 70,000-seat stadium on Thursday were handling dogs trained to sniff for explosive devices. They encircled cars entering the Superdome parking garage and, in some cases, sniffed bags and backpacks.

In a free country, no major event can ever be so safeguarded and so hardened that it is completely and absolutely secure. There will always be some residue of risk.

But while we should demand competence from our government, it’s right and noble that Americans accept what risk remains and play on — not out of frivolity, but out of respect for the dead.

Outside of a direct threat to the Superdome in Louisiana, the decision to move the game to some other city or some conceivably more secure location would have been an unmitigated surrender to evil.

To live in inordinate fear is, truly, to not live at all. When the Georgia Bulldogs and the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame meet on the field this afternoon, they will be playing for themselves and their universities. They will also be playing for us all.