I think this time it's noteworthy to talk about the most powerful force on this planet. One that from the beginning of recorded history, I think, we have seen the powers of fear. Fear of new religions, fear of old religions, fear of new people and new ideas, essentially what it narrows down to is a fear of change. We as a species have reacted the same.
We work to snuff out, often to the extreme, that which makes us question the legitimacy of what we have accepted and are comfortable with as concrete. I'm talking about the Crusades, the Inquisition and even the Holocaust.
All of these moments in history have to do with the isolation and slaughter of people who think differently than another group of people.
Edmund Burke wrote some 20 years before the Revolutionary War, "No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers and acting and reasoning as fear."
Recently it's this health insurance debate that has made the crazies scurry out of the woodwork. Claims of socialism, death committees and illegal immigrants getting free health care are what these "roadblocks to progress" are saying.
I am not saying it is a fantastic idea; personally, I am still educating myself on the facts, comparing them to other countries who run this system. I'm not basing my judgments on the propaganda the very same people who will profit from a private system are feeding me.
Let me get back on track. It is fear that these "town hall" meeting hecklers are spreading. There are thoughts that some of them are even professionals being paid to go from meeting to meeting discouraging discussion and yelling claims of "death panels" and "communism."
Because we are scared, we are foregoing our brilliant gift of reason.
At what price is this self-induced handicap coming? Not only are we hurting ourselves in the physical sense, since we are talking about health insurance, but are we also prohibiting ourselves as a society from evolving?
Time changes, it's just what happens. I hear people all the time saying how, "Oh if we would just learn from history, we could avoid all of this." All of what? Fixing a broken system? I am sorry, but there is nothing conservative about ignorance and a refusal to move. Oh wait, that is exactly what that word means.
Liberal is not a political party, but a mindset that we all should adopt that allows us to remain open minded to anything. The only way we can be more confident in our own beliefs is to know everything about the other side of the argument. If you are scared and running away from it, you have already lost the debate and are useless to your cause.
One of the things that made Hitler so successful at what he did was he controlled peoples' minds by playing to their individual fears: money, immigrants and religion.
These German people, many of them good people, were tricked into following this man because, I'm going to say it, their mind set was conservative, unwilling to accept change because they were afraid of the instability of questioning themselves and their leaders. Tell me I'm wrong. The result of their fear was the genocide of 6 million European Jews. Will it come to that here?
So, to wrap it up, keep your mind to yourself. It's all we really have anymore.
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