Tuesday July 22, 2008, 2:45 pm
Lately, a succession of official warnings about possible forms of terrorist attack on the homeland has served the same purpose: keeping the people “vigilant,” which is to say, willing to pour enormous amounts of their money into the government’s bottomless budgetary pits of “defense” and “homeland security”

At every point, opportunists latch onto existing fears and strive to invent new ones to feather their own nests. Thus, public-school teachers and administrators agree that the nation faces an “education crisis.” Police departments and temperance crusaders insist that the nation faces a generalized “drug crisis” or at times a specific drug crisis, such as “an epidemic of crack cocaine use.” Public-health interests foster fears of “epidemics” that in reality consist not of the spread of contagious pathogens but of the lack of personal control and self-responsibility, such as the “epidemic of obesity” or the “epidemic of juvenile homicides.” By means of this tactic, a host of personal peccadilloes has been medicalized and consigned to the “therapeutic state” (Nolan 1998, Szasz 2001, Higgs 1999).

In this way, people’s fears that their children may become drug addicts or gun down a classmate become grist for the government’s mill—a mill that may grind slowly, but at least it does so at immense expense, with each dollar falling into some fortunate recipient’s pocket (a psychiatrist, a social worker, a public-health nurse, a drug-court judge; the list is almost endless). In this way and countless others, private parties become complicit in sustaining a vast government apparatus fueled by fear.

Fear Works Best in Wartime

Even absolute monarchs can get bored. The exercise of great power may become tedious and burdensome—underlings are always disturbing your serenity with questions about details; victims are always appealing for clemency, pardons, or exemptions from your rules. In wartime, however, rulers come alive. Nothing equals war as an opportunity for greatness and public acclaim, as all such leaders understand (Higgs 1997). Condemned to spend their time in high office during peacetime, they are necessarily condemned to go down in history as mediocrities at best.

Tuesday July 22, 2008, 9:42 pm
Noted. Thanks for this story Michael.

Wednesday July 23, 2008, 2:05 am
Noted with thanks Michael
I'd like to add that when signing petitions your name instead of anonymous is much more powerful for this very reason. Shows them you will NOT be intimidated

Wednesday July 23, 2008, 5:38 am

Thank you Michael - very good and enlightening article!

Wednesday July 23, 2008, 8:33 am
Noted with thanks Michael, great article

Thursday July 24, 2008, 7:38 pm
I have to agree Michael....it is all about the *FEAR*! Thanks...noted!

Thursday July 24, 2008, 7:48 pm
Even before the war, the country had become a bureaucrat’s paradise. But with the launching of the war effort the bureaus proliferated and the bureaucrats swarmed over the land like a plague of locusts. ... The place [Washington, D.C.] swarmed with little professors fresh from their $2,500-a-year jobs now stimulated by five, six and seven-thousand-dollar salaries and whole big chunks of the American economy resting in their laps. (310, 315)

I highly recommend "Washington goes to War" by the late
David Brinkley. Mr. Brinkley wrote the book over 20 yrs.
ago, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find. It's a
great read, of how Washington D.C. went from being a
sleepy little southern town, to "the capital of the
free world" between 1939 and 1945.

Okay, so we all know that fear is the chief weapon of
the government. How do we defeat that weapon? Knowledge
is power, and if we educate ourselves enough to see thru
the bullsh*t the government (and Fox News) heaps on us
on a daily basis, we won't be afraid, and government is
rendered powerless.

Thanks, Mike, for an outstanding post!
noted.

Friday July 25, 2008, 2:42 am
Michael, you are so right...all authoritarian enterprises rule by fear.

Saturday July 26, 2008, 6:59 am
fear has always been a great motivator to put things in motion it is time we say to the fear merchants of the world-NO MORE FEAR-YOU CANNOT CONTROL US ANYMORE!! WE ARE NOT AFRAID! Fear has no place in light and love -Freedom Is Devoid of fear!!- It is way past time to be proactive without fear and continue to change the course-It's working people keep on keeping on -Everyone of you who do something make a huge difference-like a pebble in a pond the waves go out and touch all in it's path-Blessings