The only thing we have to fear…
[Certain remarks about fear as a motivator for people such as myself (such as this comment, found in this thread), got me to thinking about writing a comprehensive response. I had that response all set in my mind, but then I realized it sounded familiar, and not just because I’d had those thoughts before. It turns out that I’d written those thoughts before, in this post entitled, “Fraidy cats and fear itself: Left and Right.”
And so I’m reposting it.]
There’s been a longstanding meme on the Left about the Right, one I’ve written about before. It’s a twist on the old schoolyard taunt, “Fraidy, cat, fraidy cat!”
The allegation is that the Right is motivated by fear–and unrealistic and wildly exaggerated fear, at that. My esteemed colleague Shrinkwrapped has written a recent and excellent piece on the subject.
Funny; when I look about me on the Right, I don’t see a whole lot of fear. Anger, perhaps, both at the Left and at the Islamist totalitarian enemy. But on the whole, the Right seems to me to be realistically facing and evaluating the threat before us, taking the enemy at its word about what it intends to do, and trying to learn the lessons of history. The Right wishes to take action against that enemy rather than wait in passive denial, wring its hands in fear, or pursue the false hope of appeasement.
One can disagree with the methods and approach of the Right without disagreeing about the degree of threat represented by the enemy. The Left, however, in choosing the “fraidy cat” argument, appears to be thinking along the following lines (excerpt from that previous post of mine about fear):
The legacy of Vietnam is that the left has a lingering mindset that considers national security concerns to almost always be mere excuses for government spying…The left, and many liberals, seem to feel that the raising of security issues in these situations is almost always bogus–a sort of screen, used by a proto-totalitarian government to cover its own misuse of power, with the goal of getting away with domestic spying on its enemies, and the further consolidation of its own power. If this is the conception, then national security concerns must be downplayed in almost all cases, and the role of fear as motivation for those concerns exaggerated instead.
I see the Right as motivated by realism about the goals of Islamist totalitarianism, and this leads to calls for action to block the enemy before the threat it represents becomes even greater, and the possibility of even more devastation looms larger.
But even if we are willing to grant, for the sake of argument, the Left’s charge that the main motivation on the Right is fear, we can say two things. The first is that in facing an enemy bent on one’s destruction and willing to purposely kill as many innocents as possible with all the weapons at its disposal, some element of fear (as in “apprehension of a danger”) is certainly warranted. The real question is whether the fear is realistic or whether it is exaggerated, and whether the person is paralyzed by that fear, or whether he/she takes appropriate action to forestall the feared consequences.
The left has its own fears, of course, and they are potent motivators, as well. As previously stated, they fear abuse of power by our own government in the pursuit of national security more than any foreign threat. To parse it even more finely, sometimes it seems that they fear abuse of power by a Republican executive branch more than anything; back in the days of FDR they liked a powerful federal government well enough, when it was run by a Democrat.
Speaking of FDR, it was he who famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The context in which he made that statement is interesting; take a look at his First Inaugural Address, delivered in March of 1933, when the nation faced the Great Depression, the subject matter of FDR’s speech.
FDR does indeed say, “The only think we have to fear is fear itself” (and, by the way, listen to the audio; what a speaker he was!). But this is the message in which his quote was embedded:
…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself””-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory…In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties [he follows with a long list of the problems the nation faced at the time]…Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Then, as now, the danger of fear is not really fear itself. It is, as FDR stated [emphasis mine], “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts.”
I submit that those words define the stance of the Left today far more than that of the Right–in fearing, for example, warrantless NSA wiretapping of calls with terrorist foreign nationals more than the consequences of not using reasonable tools in our arsenal in order to fight an implacable and vicious enemy (and see here if you wish to revisit the complexities of the legal arguments concerning these wiretappings).
And I agree, along with FDR, that “only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.” I happen to think the Left fits the definition of “foolish optimist” in denying the dark realities of the present-day Islamist totalitarian threat. The Left, of course, thinks people such as myself to be foolish optimists in denying the dark realities of the threats posed by the would-be dictators Bush and Rove, and that we are timid and cowering fraidy cats in assuming that people such as Ahmadinejad mean exactly and precisely what they say.
[NOTE: And speaking of fear…]
What strikes me as really odd about the left’s oft-repeated mantra of “fear” is that the things they fear that the government will do are almost always the things that THEY do when given power.
I mean, really: fearing that the right of “free speech” will be taken away, when they’re the ones concocting “hate speech/crime” laws and enacting speech codes?
Worrying about “domestic spying” when their favorite president used the FBI to spy on the White House Travel Office?
Please.
Maybe Leftys are fearful at home and Rightys are fearful abroad?
No…right now Rightys are fearful everywhere….listen to everything that this President says, (not the Decider, the Divider) listen to everything every Republican says this cycle, listen to the proxies…It’s fear served up cold….
and for Dick Cheney everyday is halloweeeeeen…..
(sound of wolf howling…bats batting and skeletons creaking)
I’d vote for Powell.And I think Armitage and Powell are stand up guys…the rest you can send to Hallowwen Disney as permanent displays….
And so with their bang up job on Iraq and Nth Korea we all look forward to Bush and Rove’s handling of Iran, or will the media defeat them there as well?
You are missing the point.
I dont think the left is underestimating the threat, neither are they conflating it with everything under the sun, they see it for what it is, they are just going about it differently.
Anyway we all know that Israel will take out the Iranian sites, with or without the help of the US. Israeli leadership speeches this last week have been priming for it.
Oh give me a break. You idiots blew a relatively small threat up into a grandiose threat and then respond by starting a preemptive war which preempted nothing. Your monkey brains have a demonstrated difficulty in regards to appropriately sensing and responding to the threats we face as human beings on a daily basis. You typically respond to only a small set of officially approved threats while other more formidable threats go unnoticed or actively avoided. And when you respond to your perceived threats it is in a manner which is either astonishingly out of proportion to the threat or totally ineffective due to some ideological agenda which limits you ability to address all aspects of a given threat.
Hey but don’t worry Ted “Jesus Camp” Haggard still loves you.
Yo, mark:
Seen the NYT front page this morning? Iraq had almost everything it needed for a nuke in ’02.
Seems like GWB may have had it right all along.
The Left are the ones who don’t have the aggressive mentality of a warrior, and they think we are the ones that are beholden to our fear?
Give me a break, these people are so paralyzed by their fear, they won’t even criticize Islam on the air waves.
Cause they know they are weak at heart, and spineless. They won’t do anything, and by not doing anything, they allow fear to triumph.
With all the weapons and firepower on the Right, it is the Left that wants to take it all away, “for the good of us all” via government regulation.
They are more anti-gun crusaders, than anti-terroist crusaders. They would rather stab their compatriots in the back, then fight a common enemy face to face.
Not only honorless and cowardly, but despicable as well.
(mark, he loves you more)
Hey but don’t worry Ted “Jesus Camp” Haggard still loves you.
I think the Right could use a little fear. It might serve to motivate you to think of the consequences of your actions before making big decisions. Whether fear is the answer or not, you owe it to the families of the 2,500+ US service men and women killed in Iraq to learn some lessons.
Also, I would just like to point out to poor old stumbley: there were no WMDs in Iraq. We were lied to. Furthermore, major combat operations were not complete when GWB announced they were on the deck of that ship. Peace has not been secured in Iraq and terrorism has not been defeated. For goodness sake, those three Israeli soliders are still being held captive in Lebanon/Gaza. Look, I really hate being the bearer of bad news but the neocon foreign policy experiment is a complete, total and utter failure.
Yeah, we could have just done this forever:
“Earlier today, I ordered America’s armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors”
– President William Jefferson Clinton 12/16/98
You dirty lefties only liked this ‘cuz it was ineffectual. You filthy leftists love intentions, but loath actual results….
Derek, you and the rest of the crabs in the bucket just keep trying to pull us back into the bottom of the heap, but we’re getting out of this rat maze, honestly.
Neo, as Derek from the Uk demonstrates, the Left does not understand anything you say. They only fear it.
FDR also said: “To some generations much is given. From some, much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”
As does this one.
oh Derek…you’re nitpicking…
Gray…what did your parents do to you???????????
Ymarsakar – ‘aggressive mentality of the warrior’? What did you have for breakfast this morning? Raw meat?
If you all showed this much rage towards al-Qaeda, the real enemies instread of the straw men you choose to fight online, they’d be finished by now, but oh yeah I forgot, el presidente (president Gilligan?) said Osama wasn’t important….the elections weren’t close enough then I guess…
So Yakshamash, have you enlisted to fight the soiled and hated cross dressing, shit smearing enemy of our people….Or…. what?
It was known since ’91 that there was no WMD capabilities in Iraq.
And us lefties don’t differeniate between Clinton’s war crimes and Bush’s….