Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Monday, October 27, 2014

We ARE A Nation Of Cowards

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donny-deutsch-nation-of-cowards

I think Deutsch is 100% right.

I also think that as real threats become rarer and rarer, we tend to inflate imagined threats.

In other words, as we no longer have to fear childhood illnesses, we start to fear vaccines.  As we no longer fear rampaging bands of brigands, we start to fear ISIS.  As we no longer fear dying of appendicitis, we start to fear Ebola.

I don't know why it is we seem to cling to fear like an anti-security blanket, but we do.  And if that's not enough, we fear zombies or vampires or other sundry boogeymen.

Is fear so deeply ingrained in us that we create it where it shouldn't exist?

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