Culture of FEAR

Oooooh, don't look now but....

Well, now that Busch's cabinet has mostly deserted him I wonder who will replace our Head Fearmonger? Who will help keep us afraid?

PARADE Magazine | (Michael Crichton) Let's Stop Scaring Ourselves--December 5, 2004

We are now conditioned to be afraid - all the time:
->AIDS
->terrorists
->drugs
->sex offenders
->economy
->identity theft
->bankruptcy
->West Nile/SARS/

We have something to fear all day, every day! We've tired of the war on drugs - with all of these mandatory minimum sentences, we're running out of people to lock up - we're at/over capacity in our prisons and we have an enthusiastic, albeit uneducated, workforce to staff our prisons, our other young men are either in the military, school, or working, the rest are sitting around getting high, listening to music and feeling really cool in their parent's houses.

Now we get to fear the draft, world war III, global warming and the impending ice age, our rapidly approaching police state and the lovely martial law that may envelop our troubled nation. Yippee!

Of course, the Supreme Court has ruled that Americans do not have the right to join a militia, but we are welcome to join the National Guard, the government's militia against the people...

And remember, 2+2=5!

In 1866, the Supreme Court wrote:

"[I]t is the birthright of every American citizen when charged with a crime, to be tried and punished according to law. The power of punishment is alone through the means which the laws have provided for that purpose, and if they are ineffectual, there is an immunity from punishment, no matter how great the offender the individual may be, or how much his crimes may have shocked the sense of justice of the country, or endangered its safety. By the protection of the law, human rights are secured; withdraw that protection, and they are at the mercy of wicked rulers, or the clamors of an excited people."
Ex Parte Milligan , 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2, 118-19, 18 L.Ed. 281 (1866).

We have seemed to forgotten this in America. We are so easily whipped into a frenzy, we call for blood [death penalty], castration or worse. We have increasingly accepted the small steps to take our personal liberties away one at a time, rather insidious or we would be up in arms...

"Experience should teach us to be on our guard to protect liberty when government's purpose are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment of men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis from Olmstead v. United States

Is anyone else coming to the same conclusions? I know there are!