Nothing to Fear But the Fearful ThemselvesOp-Ed by Dan Sanchez I was terrified. I was not terrorized, mind you. What happened in Paris was tragic, of course. But I was not so ignorant and innumerate as to think the kind of violence it represented was a statistically significant direct threat to myself and my loved ones. I was fully cognizant that, even with the recent uptick in terror attacks, the probability of my family ever being caught up in one was vanishingly minuscule. I am more likely to befelled by a deer or a bolt of lightning than by a jihadists Kalashnikov. What terrified me was the response of all the people who are incapable of such a proportional perspective: those who saw the news from France and panicked, thinking Im next! As distant as it was, the Paris attacks unleashed in America a surge of fear and of calls for greater police powers, as well as an attendant wave of anti-Muslim hate and war lust. And as sophisticated and urbane as the French are reputed to be, they too let irrational terror wash over them. And under its sway, they permitted the State to run rampant over life and liberty. The public attitude was distilled by a young French citizen whose message to her government was,Do whatever you want, but keep me safe. With this mandate, France escalated its pointless and terrorist-breeding bombing of civilian-filled Syrian towns. And at home, as Truth in Mediareported: the French government declared astate of emergency based on a rarely used 1955 law that allows the state to conduct warrant-less searches of private property, impose curfews, restrict public gatherings and movements of people, confiscate weapons at will and take over the press. As always, the statist public perversely responded to terrorism drawn upon their heads by their governments foreign militancy by sanctioning more such militancy. And it perversely rewarded that government for its abject failure to prevent the attacks with more resources, powers, and responsibility. On top of arrest sweeps and threatening to close mosques, the French governments emergency powers were invoked to placeactivists under house arrest in order to squelch completely unrelated protests. This demonstrated vividly thatwar is indeed the health of the State, and war-spawned terrorist attacks are like an adrenaline shot for domestic tyranny. When I saw these responses, it fully sank in just how surrounded my family and I are by human livestock and just how acutely dangerous that position is. I realized that, when an attack of that scale and shock-value again happens on American soil, the pack-minded multitudes all around me will deafeninglybay for war. And theherd-minded hundreds of millions will stampede to the State for security, bleating to please, please be shorn of their remaining liberties. I am not terrified of the terrorists; i.e., I am not, myself, terrorized. Rather, I am terrified of the terrorized; terrified of the bovine masses who are so easily manipulated by terrorists, governments, and theterror-amplifying media into allowing our country to slip toward totalitarianism and total war. Now the result of that could be a statistically significant threat to myself and my family. Under an omnipotent government with permanent emergency powers, there would be a significant likelihood of my nephew beingdrafted to help occupy a foreign country; my daughter going hungry thanks towartime economic planning; or myself being imprisoned or shot as a dissident. Yet I have drawn solace from the fact that libertarians like myself are not alone in pushing back against the terrorized Right. Following the Paris attacks, manyexcellent articles from the political Left were published wisely warning the West not to answer indiscriminate violence in kind. Such a terror-driven response is exactly what the terrorists want, in order topolarize and sharpen a clash of civilizations. And then yesterdays San Bernardino attack happened. Before the fact that the alleged shooters were Muslim emerged, the Left began jumping all over it as yet another in a long series of mass shootings by whites that demonstrated the urgent need for more gun control. Two weeks earlier, these same progressives were calmly counseling the public to not be terrorized into giving their government more power to bomb, register, and persecute Muslims. Now they themselves were trying to terrorize the public into giving their government more power to disarm, register, and persecute gun owners. They point out that you are more likely to be killed by awhite, homegrown terrorist than a Muslim one. That may be true, but both of those fates are still far less likely than your odds of being crushed by furniture (or beingkilled by a cop, for that matter). Neither of these exaggerated threats are any justification for incurring the great and underestimated dangers involved in granting government sweeping new powers. Progressives, who rightly support Black Lives Matter, are pining for more gun laws, while the already existing gun possession laws are one of the chief pretexts cops and courts use tobrutalize and incarcerate blacks. And the same progressives who rightly warn ofpotential fascism under the divisive demagoguery of Donald Trump, want to give the institution that Trump may come to control greater power to register and disarm the public. Theyignore or deny the fact that themass human roundups we associate with such regimes are only practicable given broad civilian disarmament. And broad civilian disarmament, in turn, is only practicable given broad gun registration. For example, the German Jews and liberals were easily liquidated by the Nazis, thanks to theWeimar Republics gun registration laws. Do you really want every single Mexican and Muslim in America disarmed or easily disarm-able under Chancellor Trump? After San Bernardino, I am just as terrified of the terrorized and terrorizing Left as I am of the terrorized and terrorizing Right. I more fully realize that the latter can only do its worst if enabled by the former. The Left sets us up for the Right to knock us down. Call it the Weimar/Third Reich one-two punch. I do not irrationally and disproportionately fear Muslim bomb-wielding jihadists or white, gun-toting nutcases. But I rationally and proportionately fear those who do, and the regimes such terror empowers.History demonstrates that governments are capable of mass murder and enslavement far beyond what rogue militants can muster. Industrial-scale terrorists are the ones who wear ties, chevrons, and badges. But such terrorists are apowerless few without thesupine acquiescence of the terrorized many. There is nothing to fear but the fearful themselves. Paris and San Bernardino taught me that my family is trapped amid a herd, completely surrounded by cattle-minded millions who can be spooked into large-scale stampedes with small-scale crimes. And there is literally no way out, because virtually the entire world is afflicted with one form of collectivist statism or another. Therefore, the only way to prevent my loved ones from being trampled is by helping as many people as I can to break the spell of terror that turns civilized men and women into rampaging beasts. That is why I am writing this essay: to implore you, the reader, to snap out of that spell if you have not already, and to help others do the same. Stop swallowing the overblown scaremongering of the government and its corporate media cronies. Stop letting them use hysteria over small menaces to drive you into the arms of tyranny, which is the greatest menace of all. Overthrow the reign of terror the State has installed over your mind. Else the days ahead may be terrible indeed. Further Reading: This article (Nothing to Fear But the Fearful Themselves) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Dan Sanchez and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email edits@theantimedia.org. Dan Sanchez began contributing to Anti-Media as an independent journalist in August of 2015. His topics of interest include anti-imperialism, economic education, libertarian philosophy, peaceful parenting, and police accountability. He currently resides in Auburn, Alabama. Its time to stop trying to drag the lost 95% with us, they are just deadwood holding us back and they will embrace and even defend their slavery no matter what great efforts we make to try to make them understand. The hysterical sleeping dumbed-down masses are indeed a danger to us.Those who have the capacity to wake up will do so eventually whether we put our energies into helping them do so.or whether we choose not to, because the point has now been reached whereby those of us who can see and understand what is happening have to first of all protect ourselves from those who cant or wont for our own survival. Sorry, but that is the stark reality of the critical situation we now face. Couldnt have said it better and one thing to add. Beware of the mindless herd for they will turn on you for not being a willful victim such as them. Ive been telling those who have brains and spine still intact, get out of the internet and make contacts and plans with like minded people IN PERSON. Too many masks and infiltrators in the internet. Time is short. Heres a quote from Truth In Media to consider about the france attacks( soon a tactic to be used here, or should I say ALREADY) As always, the statist Americans, you need to read that quote everyday until you really understand that this is being done right under your nose Start organizing IN PERSON I agree w/ you both and thanks to activistpost we are certainly stocking up. The gubbers in the east would take all that you have in fact they have been stealing from humanity for centuries, with their zentral banks, drugs, oil, gold and continuous made up wars to keep the common horde thinned. the various generals in the various countries dont seem to ever make any u turns. (tho some were fired a couple years back) From Dans writing he seems a good and moral man, but I, once like him, had a self defeating fixation of the savior complex he shows. Many in our nation have been reduced to responding to soundbites and emotional rhetoric. As Einstein quoted, Those who are happy to walk rank and file already have my contempt. They neednt a brain, a stem will suffice They have allowed themselves to become so brainwashed that they themselves dont even realize they no longer think for themselves they just REACT. 