Comfortable Words from a Skeptic

One of FDR's many mercenary writers penned a line that is quoted often but perhaps not enough: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." That's obviously not true in any literal sense. As the tornado comes barreling down the street and is about to slam into my house and take us all to Oz,. fear is not the main problem, but in responding to the twin panics, ginned up by government and their media, fear is the greatest problem.

A friend recently posted something someone wrote him, comparing our current problems with the Holocaust and used as an example how used we have become to wearing masks and getting vaccinated. I wonder how a Jewish or Catholic inmate of a Nazi prison camp would respond to that one.

Leo Strauss had his limitations but he can be forgiven a great deal for contributing the trope "reductio ad Hitlerum" to political discourse. There are two hysterias in America, and they have been around since before I was born. The first is the hysterical fear that leads to total conformism, whether to the Potemkin village illusions of the 1950;s or the current program of intimidation associated with COVID 19 and BLM.

The second is the Lynch mob paranoia hysteria that manifests itself among anti-vaccers and all the varieties of conspiracy theorists, as bland and predictable as a fast-food menu. I don't know which side is more ludicrous than the other, but at least the conformists are not losing their jobs and going to jail. Their knees are jerking just as violently, but they are jerking on "the right side of history."

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was funny, even silly, but it is useful to recall the words written on the cover: DON'T PANIC!

If you can keep your head, when.......

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Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina

7 Responses

  1. Allen Wilson says:

    I’ve been resisting the paranoid reactionary tendency. Telling people that big corporations must be destroyed in order to put an end to all this is a bit like saying that we need to find a way to deflect asteroids from the Earth so one won’t destroy us all; impossible at best, and it sounds absolutely crazy. How does one stay sane in a crazy world? Don’t ask me.

  2. Vince Cornell says:

    Prayer, Mr. Wilson. And Bourbon. Joking (maybe) aside, I am in the convenient spot of being so busy with my family affairs I barely have time for work, let alone working myself up into a lather. Others, I know, are not so blessed, and all I can think is that one must replace the temptation of spending time looking at news with something positive like a good book or music or hike or a few rounds in the heavy bag. And delete social media accounts. They’re of the devil.

  3. Vince Cornell says:

    I meant ON the heavy bag! Being in a heavy bag sounds like mobsters are about to throw one into the river. Stupid phone keyboard.

  4. Dominick D says:

    Rather, a few rounds in the heavy bag is probably the best thing a family man could do for society these days.

  5. James D. says:

    During this whole Chinese Coup Virus shutdown, I purchased a punching bag for my older children. I thought that they could take out some aggression on the bag instead of punching each other. They like to hit the bag, but I haven’t seen much of a reduction in the pugilism between squabbling siblings….

  6. Vince Cornell says:

    Hopefully, though, you’ve seen an improvement in form and technique!

  7. James D. says:

    That’s the part that has me worried! I don’t want to be caught flat-footed with a straight right…