http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/12/20/1460925/-Land-of-the-free-home-of-the-fearful?detail=email
On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States of America. He was coming into the office of president as the nation was still in the depths of the Great Depression. In his inaugural address, he said:
This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. 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.
Those words still reverberate today. We see fear driving policy, fear driving our news, fear driving our lives. During the 2008 presidential election, then-candidate Barack Obama said, "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." He was criticized at the time for saying those words—even though what he said really was not that far off from what President Roosevelt said in 1933.
Like Roosevelt, President Obama was also right: Look at today’s Republican presidential candidates and their rhetoric. Donald Trump wants a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” and plans to build a wall between Mexico and the United States. He’s just playing to the fears of many ill-informed Americans.
It is also what sells firearms in this country—the answer to every shooting in America is that a good guy with a gun could have stopped it. Yet there never seems to be a good guy with a gun around when you need one—unless you are a shoplifter. Then be assured, a good guy with a gun will shoot at you.
Today, many Americans fear immigrants, they fear religions that are not their own, they fear young black men, and they generally live in a world of fear. It’s impressive that they ever manage to leave their homes.
As President Roosevelt said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Yet here we are, 82 years later—living in fear, and allowing those same fears to control us. Instead of learning about Islam, many Americans have chosen to be fearful of it. Instead of understanding migrant labor, or why people come here from Mexico and Central America, many Americans fear immigrants, even though those immigrants are the people who pick our crops and do many of the jobs that Americans cannot or will not do.
In the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks we saw unprecedented firearms sales during Black Friday, likely due to fears of terrorism in America. This despite the fact that the odds of being a victim of terrorism are about the same as being killed by your television set falling on you.
We have become victims of our own fears, but this is a time when we cannot afford to be afraid. Fear leads to poor policy decisions. Even FDR was a victim of fear when he interned American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. There was no justification for his actions then, just as there are no justifications for fearing Muslims or immigrants—regardless of where they come from—today.
We are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. Today, we are the land of the panicked, and home of the fearful.
this article says it all we need to fear the republican propaganda machine it has done more damage to America second only to recent history 911 and when you think about it that too is because of a republican BUSH/CHEYNEY ignoring the multiple warnings of it coming and lately they tried to sell us "Bush kept us safe", yeah after he allowed us to be attacked and never delivered on his promise to get those responsible. when they were killed they tried to take credit.
now here's what Bush really deserves
