"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Paul to the persecuted at Philippi (2:5-11)

02 May 2009

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself... (moved)

I think FDR gets credit for that one. Maybe. Actually, the one thing I fear most is my neighbors' fear. People do stupid things when they're afraid. They'll agree to anything when fear takes over. And one thing I've noticed in the past decade or maybe two is that Americans are pretty prone to jump and just about any kind of "boo" in the news headlines. And the boogyman sells newspapers, or so it seems, because the news people are shouting "boo" all the time.

The latest is of course, the swine flu. Never mind that the normal old run of the mill flu kills or sickens more people each and every year than this "swine flu." But the swine flu, or maybe we should call it 'whine flu' is all over the newspapers. Last night I went to a baseball game with 14,000+ other sports fans, at some point during the game, I thought to myself that if I sneezed I bet I could clear the section, get a better seat. "a-choo. Oink!"

But before that was terrorism. Our so-called excuse for signing over our freedoms to a president bent on spying on us. We accepted unconstitutional searches and seizures at our airports, ball parks, and national historic monuments without batting an eye. Then, like a society of lemmings, we turned on that president and elected an open socialist with the ethics of the Sopranos because he looked cute on the Tee-vee and we're afraid of the swine flu.

We Americans have been afraid of a lot of things, from Communism (ah Mr. McCarthy) to the environment (Mr. Gore, yet another alarmist with an agenda) and let's not neglect the Y2K insanity, and each time we hand over a little more personal freedom, a little more personal responsibility. So what will this Pig Flu Panic cost us? Our freedom to make decisions about our health care (ah, that indeed would play into the hands of the left, wouldn't it) or our freedom to freely assemble or perhaps our freedom to travel within or outside our national boarders.

Fear is the altar at which Americans are increasingly coming to worship and make sacrifice. Panic is an epidemic more deadly than any flu.

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