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FREEDOM from FEAR Freedom from fear is a human right - unavailable when we're afraid. Franklin D. Roosevelt warned us that: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself". Not withstanding, the apostles of fear are always free to spread their psycho-venom protected by the 1st Amendment and free speech. Thus it is that today, after too many wars have been fought to keep us free, freedom from fear is still an unrealized dream - a kind of freedom that least we know and most we need. Fear can be real or imaginary - life threatening and contagious. We can frighten ourselves. Most of our fears are psychological - easily manipulated by perverts who have a need to frighten other people. Some politicians build their careers on fear; first by alerting their constituents to troubling conditions (real or imaginary) and then by exploiting the fears so generated. Mark Twain wrote: "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not the absence of fear." What can we expect if our President sows fear with "Axis of Evil" talk and reminders that 9/11 was a "Wakeup Call from Hell” - and exploits the fears of other nations to build “coalitions of the terrified” to wage war on fearsome middle-eastern despots? Our insecurities are amplified when our country is placed on Code Orange Alert to warn us of suicide bombers, al Qaeda, Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and other evildoers - and uses defective intelligence, fear-based diplomacy, and display of military might to terrorize the rest of the world. Our concern is that all the Homeland Defense and iron bar fences we erect to keep terrorism at bay are fences that also limit our own freedom of movement, diminish our own civil rights and impound us in a borderless concentration camp that limits our constitutional freedoms for our own protection - that surrounds us with flag waving patriots who impugn our patriotism if we aren't dutifully frightened by the same fears that frighten them. No matter which side of the iron bars we're on, we're either inside our jail or theirs - and the irony is that we jail ourselves. Our conscience compells us to believe that "God's Way is Love", and that the highest form of bravery in defense of freedom is getting to know, love and care for those whom the war makers designate as our enemies. Invariably, getting to know them as human beings is to know how they too are caught up in their fears of us, and that in their hearts they love freedom as much as we do. It’s all too easy (and unreasonable) to make war on people we don’t know - and it is equally unreasonable to be treated as enemy by those who don't know us. Fear itself is an irrational adversary. John Black Lee
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