Man Will Save Himself

Originally Posted by First Paragraph

What threatens us today is fear. Not plagues, biological attacks, chemical warfare, the armies of the world - not even the atom bomb nor even fear of it, because if the bomb fell on you tonight, all it could do would be to kill us, which is nothing, since in doing that, it will have robbed itself of its only power over us: which is fear of it, the being afraid of it. Our danger is not that. Our danger is the forces in the world today which are trying to use man’s fear to rob him of his individuality, his soul, trying to reduce him to an unthinking mass by fear and bribery – giving him free food which he has not earned, easy and valueless money which he has not worked for; - the economics or ideologies or political systems, communist or socialist or democratic, whatever they wish to call themselves, the tyrants and the politicians, American or European or Asiatic, whatever they call themselves, who would reduce man to one obedient mass for their own aggrandizement and power, or because they themselves are baffled and afraid, afraid of, or incapable of, believing in man’s capacity for courage and endurance and sacrifice.