To be unafraid is unpatriotic

[The Blue Flower]

Quite the climb-down from FDR's time. If you aren't sufficiently frightened, you don't love your country. Could the Democrats please use this?

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/30/2851/

When Franklin Roosevelt took office as president in 1933, the United States was in the middle of the Great Depression. In fact, there was a worldwide economic depression. Fascism was on the rise in Europe. Mussolini ruled Italy. In January, two months before FDR was inaugurated, Hitler had been sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. On March 4, 1933, the day before Hitler formally consolidated dictatorial power, FDR gave his first inaugural address. Roosevelt told a nation facing economic calamity at home and the growing threat of fascism abroad that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”For Americans in 1933, those must have been powerful, moving words. Even seventy years later, they stir emotion. They also might make today’s Americans wonder where leaders like FDR are to be found now.

Today, leaders tell Americans “be afraid, be very afraid.” During the 2004 presidential campaign, the Bush campaign ran a television ad, featuring a menacing pack of wolves, that accused John Kerry of weakening America’s defenses and leaving Americans vulnerable. Vice President Cheney warned that if Kerry was elected, “the danger is that we’ll get hit again, that we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.” The message was clear: the Bush campaign wanted Americans to be afraid, and hoped that fear, not reason, would move them to vote for Bush.

more at link...

[bdamomma]

1. they can take that FEAR

and shove it.

[MindPilot]

2. It's tough for me to not laugh out loud at a ball game

when the National Anthem is sung. "Land of the free and the home of the brave"? Not any more.

[gratuitous]

4. "Brave" scans so much better

Besides, "Home of the pants-wetting babies crying for daddy while hiding under the bed because Fox News told us to" kinds of fucks up the meter of that last note.

[pinto]

3. What a great point, overlooked at times. The (R) mantra has been fear,

dressed in patriotic bunting.

[The Magistrate]

5. It Is, Ma'am, An Odd And Distressing Line, To Elevate Cowardice

It is indicative of the profoundest moral rot imaginable....

"Courage is the form every virtue must take at the sticking point."

[Luke_R]

6. Remember Avian Influenza?

Definately not a real threat, 200 people infected since 04.
Then there was the time we were all tricked into sealing our doors with Duct tape.