Have Americans collectively become a bunch of weenies -- a herd of 300 million scaredy-cats?
Fear as an influential factor in the political and national history of nations is hardly a novelty. Historically, in democracies and dictatorships alike, fear has been used to whip up prejudices and to bend masses to a leader's will.
Fear is a "distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, or pain, whether the threat is real or imagined." Fear is the feeling of being afraid.
In 1757, Edmund Burke wrote: "No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." Or as President Franklin D. Roosevelt assured shaken Americas at his first inaugural on March 4, 1933, during the depths of The Great Depression: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
A Nation of Scaredy-Cats
But Patrick Smith, writing in Salon.com recently, makes a creditable case that many Americans, and their supposed leaders, are wallowing in (and stoking) unjustified fears. He asks: "When did we become such a nation of scaredy-cats?"
Smith notes the recent case of a confused 57-year-old man who opened an emergency exit inside American Airlines terminal 8 at JFK airport in New York. Alarms blared and sirens flashed. The man, who had just deplaned from a flight from Haiti, later told police that he'd opened the door by accident.
For the next two hours the airport became a picture of mass bedlam, all flights halted, thousands forced off already loaded planes, herded through those stupid TSA security checks all over again.
Like the Emperor, TSA Has No Clothes
What is most shocking is throughout all the media coverage of the incident, including numerous interviews with ticked off passengers and somber voiced officials, not once did anybody raised the point that maybe -- just maybe -- they overreacted. Everyone, instead, was eager to blame the hapless traveler who opened the wrong door.
"As a result of the defendant's actions, thousands of people were required to evacuate and to be re-screened by TSA, causing substantial delays in the airlines' schedules," N.Y. District Attorney Richard Browne said in a stern statement, playing to the cheap seats.
No, I'm sorry, Mr. District Attorney, but that's not it. What caused the delays and what hassled so many travelers was not the defendant's actions -- but the mindless and hysterical response by airport officials.
The Fear Game
Columnist, Ross Gittins, writing about anti-terrorism for the Australian news service, The Age, addressed what he called: "The fear game, our latest sensation."
He made the point that: "We are more likely to die on the road than be killed by a terrorist act." He added: "It's well known to psychologists that humans have a tendency to overestimate small risks while underestimating big risks. The risk of being killed in a terrorist attack is very much lower than the risk of being killed on the road. Yet after the attacks of September 2001 in America, many people switched from traveling by air to traveling by road, presuming it to be safer."
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the odds of an American dying in a terrorist attack are about one in 88,000.
The Bogeyman Will Get Us
In America the fear factor grows in influence when threats are amorphous, shadowy, unclear, yet perceived as very real, as in -- terrorism.
Politicians throughout history have employed fear as a controlling and guiding principle to achieve their ends. Offering themselves as protectors, national leaders often have touted their nostrums against alleged invasions, barbaric tribes, hated minorities.
These days too many Americans seem to be suffering from an official and media inspired fear malaise produced by terrorism and its implications; possible shoe and underpants bombers, hijackings, biological warfare, suitcase nuclear bombs, sabotage -- countless unknown (and unlikely) threats.
In order to counter these nameless, often unreasonable fears, the U.S. Congress, under President George W. Bush, enacted a series of laws that seriously curtailed constitutional freedoms to a degree unparalleled in American peace or war time.
Change You Can't Believe In
As a 2008 presidential candidate, Barack Obama attacked many of these unconstitutional Bush laws, including the horrendously misnamed "PATRIOT" Act. Once Obama became president he adopted as his own just about every one of Bush's questionable restrictions on our freedoms.
Indeed, the noted civil libertarian, Nat Hentoff, wrote an essay worth reading, entitled "George W. Obama"
As Hentoff notes: "...Bush's successor -- who actually taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago -- is continuing much of the Bush-Cheney parallel government and, in some cases, is going much further in disregarding our laws and the international treaties we've signed."
Do You Give a Damn?
But all this raises the question: just how far are Americans willing to go in surrendering their liberties and privacy? How much in treasure are we willing to pay for this promised, perhaps illusory defense? Are we willing to become Fortress America, akin to what Israel has become?
In a N.Y. Times Magazine article a few years ago the former El Al security chief said: "Security is a balancing act and there are always trade-offs. Give me the resources, and I can guarantee your safety. The question is, what are you willing to pay or put up with to stay safe?"
Americans had better emerge from the politician-nurtured cloud of fear, (if that's what it is), and start asking and answering that question -- before we enjoy neither safety nor liberty.
Anti-Terrorism Is Big Business
One important point that has been neglected in all the talk about terrorism should be obvious: many pressure groups have an interest in exaggerating the threat of terrorism. Governments and politicians recognize the natural tendency is to unite against an external threat. For them "anti-terrorism" is a windfall gain. As Gittins says, "Most politicians haven't resisted the temptation to play up the threat rather than calm us down."
Indeed, there is now in American what might be called an Anti-Terrorism Establishment that is willing to sacrifice the U.S. Constitution, our rights and liberties and certainly, our privacy.
Fear Mongers
So the politicians use fear to pass bad laws, the police and FBI use fear to justify bigger budgets, more powers and illegal searches, and the commercial news media, that loves to sell this fear claptrap, aids and abets these too often phony fears. More government, more police, more sensational TV and news coverage.
As Patrick Smith writes: "What is it about us, as a nation, that has made us so unable to remember, and unable to cope?"
It seems that Americans, ignorant of history, never learn. Yet we will live to regret that ignorance of the past.

The PATRIOT Act Report
In this special 44 page report I wrote (and have revised for the third time,), you learn all about the PATRIOT Act and its far-reaching invasion of your rights -- and what you can do to defend yourself.