Against Hysteria
When did we become a nation of scaredy-cats?
Will
Will writes from Washington, D.C. (well, Arlington, Virginia). You can reach him at willblogcorrespondence at gmail dot com.
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When we started having more people in their late 30’s with toddlers than we had people in their early 20’s with or without them.Report
When politicians made the connections that fear = votes.Report
We have a winner! Please proceed shoeless through full-body-scan security to pick up your prize.Report
If I were to guess I’d say it was roughly one generation after we defeated the old specter of death of children before ten being common. Once the majority (vast majority) of the population had never experienced loosing a child as a fact of life then they started having fewer of them and also started coddling the ones they had more.Report
We do remember that there was a lot of fear mongering going on in the late 19th and early 20th century against the whole “anarchist menace” and the scary scary German/Irish/Russian immigrants that were coming to destroy the fabric of American society, right?Report
I don’t understand why we give the terrorists exactly what they want by having a collective freakout for months afterwards.Report
Among so-called conservatives, it came during the Bush Jr. Administration, when the so-called part of less government wanted nothing more than for the president to “keep us safe”.Report
H. L. Mencken observed the tendency in his own day. It’s hardly anything new. Only the focus changes.Report