Alarming Dangers

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We live in a dangerous world: the world-wide financial melt-down; swine-flu and bird-flu global pandemics; Muslim fundamentalists and Isamo-facists; neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Serial killers and drug fiends menace us from the shadows. Anti-Semitism is a perennial peril: Hitler might rise from the grave, he might still be alive plotting world conquest in a secret headquarters somewhere in a dark tropical jungle or under the Antarctic Ice Cap — which is melting! We have been threatened by fascists and Nazis; anarchists and Communists. There once was a Red Under Every Bed. There has always been a never-ending string of deadly dangers from which we must be protected. Our enemies yesterday might be our friends today, but they might become our enemies again tomorrow.

If we go back in history, it has always been thus. H.L. Mencken summed it all up with this:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

- H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

The authors of these threats are the very people who are selling protection insurance and having us fight wars to keep us safe and free. Free from what? Free from them? No, no, no, no, no.

The world's moral leaders who live in Washington urge and have urged everyone to join in the War on Poverty, the War on Illiteracy, the War on Terror, The War on Drugs, The Cold War. And let's not forget The War on Iraq, The War on Afghanistan, The War in Vietnam, The Korean War, The Second World War, The First World War, The Spanish American War, The Western Indian Wars, The Civil War, The Mexican War, The War of 1812, The War on the Barbary Pirates, The Napoleonic Wars (oops lets forget about that one), The Revolutionary War, and The French and Indian Wars. Of course, all of these Wars were necessary at the time and new Wars will be necessary as the future unfolds. You can count on it. We are currently waging a War on Global Warming and a War on Illegal Immigration. A War on Asteroid Collision is being planned and we might one day see a War on Sun Spot Activity. Are sun spots good, or are they bad?

Whatever the question might be, War has always provided the answer: War is our prefered road to peace. Hallelujah!

- Morley