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Where Does America's Fear Come From?
An anonymous reader writes "While far from a dictatorship, the United States has employed a number of paranoid tactics that delegitimize its democracy. And the motivation for doing so is — fear. That seems to be a long way from 'So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that 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 of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.' Where is the U.S. heading?"
My family visited Europe this Fall and were surprised at the level of civility experienced there.
It seems that fear and paranoia drive Americans to give up liberties in trade for some vague promise of security. "Stand your ground" laws and the vast supposedly all knowing NSA wiretapping program are just two small examples of the manifestation of all pervading fear and paranoia.
Other First World Nations have a different balance between liberty and security. It's not that they don't spy on each other. It's not that good people don't die at the hands of bad people. It has to be experienced elsewhere to know that things don't _have_ to be they way they are in the US.
I can't help but feel it has to do, in small part, with basic civility between humans. Too bad America can't/won't follow these better, more secure examples.
Dude, This is fucking America. We have never, ever all agreed on anything. In this case a significant proportion of the people who fought the Revolution were extremely pro-aristocracy.
Our number three or four guy General was "Lord Stirling," our top trainer as "Baron von Steuben," we received aid from extremely aristocratic France, and the officers of the Continental Army created a hereditary order (the Society of the Cincinnati) at the end of the war specifically intended to become our new nobility..
As for the rest, increasing the House to 30k is simply not practical. There's a reason the Indians, with a population triple ours, have a Parliament that is less then double ours. It's just not practical to run a Legislative body with more then 600 or so members. You'd have to have a working group in DC much smaller then the 30k Congressman, and you'd probably need actual Constitutional amendments governing how that working group was chosen, when the 30k could meet to fire the working group, etc.
As for points 4 and 5, you really don't understand Progressives. At all. It's not that we think sovereign debt is a good thing, or even a not-bad thing; it's that we think the problem with sovereign debt is that it leads to inflation. OTOH the problem with cutting government spending is that it involves firing people, which reduces salaries for everyone by increasing the supply of available labor while reducing the demand for said labor. If the economies doing great, inflation is real, and the employment situation is fine government debt is a bad thing to have.
But we're in the middle of a years-long employment slump, with basically no inflation, it's foolish to cut the deficit. We'd cut everyone's salary, to solve a problem that simply does not exist.
That would be like a guy whose house is currently on fire sealing up his basement because a flood is sure to hit real soon now.
I'll keep my fangs, and damn the government. And, damn the mindless sheep as well.
There is more to it than just that. Our civilization has allowed more and more purely physical power to be accessible by average folks --think of any 200-horsepower car as being equivalent to owning a herd of 200 horses, and think about all the work that such a herd might have done before the Industrial Revolution. Well, Power is supposed to be associated with Responsibility. It is Education that provides information about "how to use Power responsibly and ethically" --but there are always folks who either don't pay proper attention to the lessons, or don't care, because they want what they want, regardless of the consequences. Thus did the Power of three jet aircraft become misused as missiles, destroying two tall buildings and severely damaging a third large building. If the overall Trend continues, regarding accessibility of physical Power by average folks, then eventually average folks will have access to Power equivalent to an H-bomb. (Note that already lots of folks seem to have access to Modern Biological Power....) One of the proposed Answers to the Fermi Paradox is that every technological culture will eventually face a challenge regarding how to deal with such Power in the hands of ordinary small-minded selfish (and even psychotic) folks --and that most cultures don't survive that challenge. I will disagree that clamping down on Freedom is the correct solution; there are stories about "mad generals", after all. But we most certainly need a solution, and sooner rather than later.
AD = CE. CE expands as Common Era, and is generally more accepted in a global context, because it doesn't reference a god you may not believe in or adhere to. More than half the world's population does not follow an Abrahamic religion. The dates are exactly the same, just a different name.
You did know that AD means "Anno Domini", right? In English, that's "the year of our Lord". If you want to claim adherence to the Christain God, that's fine. You have that right. But don't expect me to pay lip service to a God that, to me, comes off as a petty, cliquish and vindictive sort, according to your own holy books.
Not my god either, but I see two objections to trying to replace AD with CE:
Firstly, it doesn't achieve your stated aim of avoiding reference to Christianity, because it continues to use what was (probably incorrectly) thought to be the year of Christ's birth as its epoch. Any pretence that the one is not derived from the other is frankly ridiculous.
Secondly, I can't comment about yourself, but most CE proponents are quite happy to use a calendar system that is replete with reference to other deities such as Thursday after Thor, January after Janus and so on. Both July and August are named after gods who we know from our history books were not exactly role models for ethical behaviour. In this context it is hard to believe that aversion to the term AD is driven by a purely secular motivation.
In the beginning, humans knew that they were only one bad mood from the gods before they met with death and destruction. Disease, famine, injury, war - all these and more could maim or kill you. In in an era where leveraged force was more the exception than the rule, even a minor injury could put you out of the game and possibly kill you and yours.
So people made sacrifices to the gods and hoped for the best, knowing that even the most benign gods were prone to go on the occasional rampage.
In the last few centuries, however, we've abandoned the gods. We think we have made ourselves masters of our own fates, because we can cure many diseases and injuries, have exterminated or reduces many of the external threats, learned to grow crops more efficiently and formed into nations and trading units extensive enough that one part of the country can keep others fed when local conditions such as drought would have previously wrought havoc on the population.
In other words, we've come to think that peace and plenty are the natural state of all civilized beings.
But not all humans are civilized, either individually or in groups. And while it helps if you're not a member of a targeted group, ultimately just about any group can be targeted. And, thanks to the incredible leverage that modern humans possess, a single person can kill hundreds with little effort. So paradoxically, the safer we get overall, the more we fear. As in many cases, the closer you get to perfection, the more it costs you. And the fewer the everyday fears, the more impact the extra-ordinary fears have.