Like Parisiens sitting outside bars and brasseries in the aftermath of the shootings in November, each of these small journeys feels like a personal rejection of the message of terror, the most effective answer that anyone can give to the challenge of the jihadis.
Certainly it was the most effective answer to the Communist propaganda.
The most effective answer may be the most straightforward: cut government spending.
In their meeting on Wednesday afternoon, Prime Minister Li Keqiang of China told Mr. Netanyahu that "the Palestinian issue is a core issue affecting the peace and stability of the Middle East, and a peaceful solution reached through dialogue and negotiations is the only effective answer," according to Xinhua, the state news agency.
The elite and lawmakers in Virginia found the most effective answer to this problem, an answer that is still with us today.
He now viewed his past self as a "booby-trapped idealist", his present attitude to war being quite different: "The only effective answer that a poet can make to barbarism is poetry, for the only answer to death is the life of the spirit".
The most effective answer to one big argument is another big argument.
The most effective answer is more robust stimulus — bigger payroll tax breaks, more infrastructure investment, bigger transfers to states and cash-strapped families — and more help for debt-choked homeowners.
For secular-minded urbanites, he is the only effective answer to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Istanbul's former mayor, who continues to be labelled an Islamist, though he insists he does not believe in mixing religion with politics.For the country's industrialists and for western governments, Mr Dervis is the only person capable of steering Turkey out of its financial mess.
The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor.
