Lessons of Fear (and some Fact-Checking to Boot!)
Remember that time-honored idea that you’re entitled to your own opinion, but you don’t get to make up your own facts? Someone should remind Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson about that today.
Here’s how he starts his column about how President Bush is scaring the bejeezus out of us for crass political gain.
Once upon a time we had a great wartime president who told Americans they had nothing to fear but fear itself. Now we have George W. Bush, who uses fear as a tool of executive power and as a political weapon against his opponents.
Franklin D. Roosevelt tried his best to allay his nation’s fears in the midst of an epic struggle against fascism. Bush, as he leads the country in a war whose nature he is constantly redefining, keeps fear alive because it has been so useful.
He said that in the midst of the stuggle against Fasicm, huh? Funny, I don’t recall us struggling against fascists in March of 1933. That’s when FDR actually said “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.”
Robinson needs to check his facts before he makes such a tendentious connection. I’m sure that others will notice this today, and perhaps someone has beaten me to the punch, but really, Robinson should know better. He’s supposed to be a professional journalist with layers upon layers of fact-checking and such. He certainly shouldn’t make such a mistake so obvious that a mere nobody like me would notice it.
But I probably shouldn’t be surprised. Reading the rest of Robinson’s column, it’s obvious that he didn’t even read FDR’s speech. If you read the inauguration speech – something, again, that Robinson clearly did not so – you’ll see that that FDR wasn’t asking America not to fear because there was nothing to fear. he was asking the nation not to allow a false fear paralyze them into inactivity. Then, like now, paralysis was a deadly enemy. The Great Depression had been going on for well over a decade and would reach its lowest point in the same year that Roosevelt gave that speech. He knew, as the Bene Gesserit taught Paul Atredies, that “Fear is the mind-killer…the little death that brings total obliteration”.
Today, Robinson and those who think like him use fear to paralyze us as well. They gin up fears of New Nazi Regime headed by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and their megacorporate masters to hold us back from aggressively pursuing and defeating those who would kill us by the hundreds of thousands if they could. They tell us how our President is shredding the Constitution every day, how he is torturing innocent Muslims by the thousands, that his every move is designed for his own personal enrichment and the sheer glee of causing pain and misery. They do this to hold on to their own little nuggets of power and influence because they know very well that if we move forward boldly, we could crush our enemy and, in the process, give tens of millions of people the chance to make their own lives and their own governments. They want us to fill us with the “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror” against which FDR warned us.
Just ask them. Ask them what justificatio nthey have for their fears. Ask them what reasoning they’ve used to come to their conclusions. Ask them to name their fears specifically. They can’t. They can only sling slogans and rumors and long ago-debunked fables. That’s all they have. They want us to be afraid of enemies that are not there instead of steeling our resolve and facing the enemies that are.
Robinson purports to be of the same stripe as Frankin Delano Roosevelt. He is nothing of the sort. I imagine that is Roosevelt could read today’s column, he wouldn’t recognize a fellow Democrat. He’d probably recognize one of the fearmongers he warned us all about in 1933.
He’d certainly recognize Robinson as one of the appeasers that nearly paralyzed our nation into inactivity in the “epic struggle against fascism”.
That struggle, by the way? Eight years later. No need to thank me, Mr Robinson. A correction will suffice.
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Category: Fighting the Islamists, Oh, THAT liberal media., The Good Old US of A
Not to be overly nitpicky, but since you are properly calling Robinson to task for blatant historical error, you need a bit of correction on something you wrote–in spring of 1933, the Depression had been on for about 4 years or so. The big stock market crash was in October, 1929, and the big drop in GNP started in early 1930. It is true that agriculture was in shaky status from the early 1920s on, but most historians date the Depression as starting in fall 1929.
I understand the point, John.
The reason I used 1920 (or so) was to help accent FDR's point. The Depression didn't simply jump up out of nowhere in 1929 or 1930. It has been building over more than a decade and, by the time it was at its worst, people were simply bone-weary and easily frightened into passivity.
I fail to see how attacking Robinson on a misplaced date or pointing the finger at liberals to say, "see it's really them!" addresses the use of fear as a political tactic.
If Eugene Robinson is wrong about when FDR said "we have nothing to fear . . ." pointing it out does not address teh Administration using fear in politics to pursue an agenda.
Nor does accusing Democrats of using fear of a new American Empire address the issue of using fear in politics.
Similarly, if you have two kids and one kid stole something, then accuses the other kid of doing the same thing; the accusation of stealing does not absolve either kid and still leaves the issue of stealing to be dealt with.
The issues are: Does this adminsitration use fear to promote it's aganda?
Does this administration violate the law and/or the spirit of the law by engaging in preemptive war without cause, eavesdropping, torture, and holding prisoners without due process (e.g. black sites).
I don't have the answers to those questions. I don't think anybody knows these answers right off the top of their head, so they should be explored by Congress and perhaps by a Court.
Name calling and saying "they do it too!" does not help this country get back on track. We need to actually address a bunch of problems in this country. So, let's address the issues instead of using red herrings and logical fallacies to shift attention from what is happening.
Hull, I"m not sure you read my post very well. I did not say "they do it, too!".
What I said was "they do it, period".
I do not buy into the proposition that the President is fear-mongering when it comes to warning us about the threat that terrorists pose to us. Again, read FDR's speech and tell me where I've misjudged the meaning of his statement. Plainly, he criticized those who would manufacture the sort of fear that causes people to freeze, lose heart, and do nothing. Not all "fear" is the same and a simplstic analogy to childhood thievery isn't even close to the mark.
I ask you, of the Left and the President, who is offering fear that paralyzes and who is offering warnings that urge action and resolve?
As for your questions, I can certainly answer them right now off the top of my head: No and No. Your insistence that a Congress of a Court may intervene in the war-prosecuting powers of a sitting President who has already been given the authority to prosecute that war by Congress gives away your agenda.
Note that Robinson didn't put quotation marks about the "fear" quote. I suspect he remembers full well that FDR actually spoke those words for the first time in 1933. But FDR spoke about fear and freedom from fear in many other speeches as well, such as the "four freedoms" speech from 1941. It was a theme he returned to many times, not just in 1933.
And anyone who thinks the Great Depression had been going on for more than a decade in 1933 shouldn't be throwing stones.
Huh, so if he didn't use quotation marks, he didn't mean it as a quote, even though he used exactly the same words? That's a stretch, but, hey, you're defending the guy. If he meant some other reference, then he should have used different words. He's a professional writer. He certainly didn't use those words by accident. Fact is, he screwed up.
And I'm not the only one who believes the Depression got up and running in the 20s.
These guys peg it starting in the 1890s. This quite liberal fellow pegs the causes starting in the 1920s, for many of the same reasons as I do. Brad DeLong, hardly a conservative, also pegs the initial slide to the mid 1920's.
Thanks for the research. I just finished writing on how the Roosevelt administration used fear far beyond anything in recent memory. It was good to be able to add that the quote isn't even from wartime.