The Beginning of Wisdom

That's part of a quote from Bertrand Russell, “to conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” It's how Peter Ludlow ends an op-ed, entitled "Fifty States of Fear", in the NY Times. Ludlow views the emphasis on fear as an attempt by our leaders to consolidate power. I think he makes sense. Surprisingly, Erik Prince, the founder of the private military contractor Blackwater Worldwide, also thinks he makes sense:

"America is way too quick to trade freedom for the illusion of security. Whether it’s allowing the N.S.A. to go way too far in what it intercepts of our personal data, to our government monitoring of everything domestically and spending way more than we should. I don’t know if I want to live in a country where lone wolf and random terror attacks are impossible ‘cause that country would look more like North Korea than America." 

Bruce Schneier, a security expert, has similar thoughts:

"By sowing mistrust, by stripping us of our privacy — and in many cases our dignity — by taking away our rights, by subjecting us to arbitrary and irrational rules, and by constantly reminding us that this is the only thing between us and death by the hands of terrorists, the T.S.A. and its ilk are sowing fear. And by doing so, they are playing directly into the terrorists’ hands.The goal of terrorism is not to crash planes, or even to kill people; the goal of terrorism is to cause terror. … But terrorists can only do so much. They cannot take away our freedoms. They cannot reduce our liberties. They cannot, by themselves, cause that much terror. It’s our reaction to terrorism that determines whether or not their actions are ultimately successful. That we allow governments to do these things to us — to effectively do the terrorists’ job for them — is the greatest harm of all."

As with most sensible people, Ludlow raises issues of accidents that we ignore: 

• a giant explosion in a fertilizer plant that killed 14 and injured 160
• the West Virginia water problem
• the 4,000+ workers killed on the job every year
• the 54,000 Americans who die every year due to work-related illnesses and accidents. 

He points out that we spend more than 7 billion dollars a year on the T.S.A. but less than  $600 million per year on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Some concluding points:

• Fear is driving the United States to believe it is above the law.
• Fear is even used to prevent us from questioning the decisions supposedly being made for our safety. 
• But perhaps it is possible to pause and subdue our fears by carefully observing reality — just as we might advise for trying to calm and comfort a fear-stricken child. We might find that, in reality, the more immediate danger to our democratic society comes from those who lurk in the halls of power in Washington and other national capitols and manipulate our fears to their own ends.