“FEAR” IS FAR FROM BEING OUR ONLY CONCERN

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first Inaugural Address, delivered March 4, 1933, included the long since famous words: “ . . . the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Yes, his first inaugural address took on an unusually solemn, religious quality (tone). And for good reason—by 1933 the terribly crippling and debilitating so-called “Great Depression” had reached its depth. And Roosevelt’s first inaugural address outlined in broad terms how he hoped to govern and reminded Americans that the nation’s “common difficulties” concerned “only material things.”

And while the tragedy of the “Great Depression” was to be endured very up-close and personal by my parents and countless others, my personal gift-of-life journey didn’t begin until several years after Roosevelt shared the above noted words of intended hope and encouragement to a terribly challenged nation.

A personal gift-of-life journey that has led me (now among the dinosaur generations), and no doubt countless others, to more and more believe that “fear” is far from being our only concern. For in addition to “fear,” the seemingly ever-growing mixed bag of threats to us personally, and as a nation, also includes but is not limited to, “ignorance,” “apathy,” “complacency,” “denial,” and “greed.”

Threats that serve as barriers to our rational dealing with agenda-driven “fears” stirred-up and profited by in some manner by the more-greedy and self-serving among us.

“Fears” such as, but not limited to:

(1.) The “Population Bomb”—the 1960’s fear that we are over-populating the Earth, will run out of food, and hence all soon starve to death, etc.

(2.) “Another Ice Age” and “Running Out of Oil”—the 1970’s fear of freezing to death from a rapidly approaching “Ice Age,” as well as the gut-wrenching fear of all the inconveniences resulting from a world “Running Out of Oil.”

(3.) “Nuclear War”—the 1980’s heightened fear of being destroyed by the outbreak of “Nuclear War” resulting from a weapons race and tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union (now Russia).

(4.) “Climate Change”—the 1990’s-Present fear that our use of evil-old-fossil-fuel (oil) is changing the Earth’s climate such that the North Pole and South Pole ice caps will melt, causing the oceans to rise to the extent of dooming all of civilization.  Yes, “Climate Change”—originally labeled “Greenhouse Effect” ...later changed to “Global Warming” ...and then not so long followed by the present preferred label . . . “Climate Change” . . . which is of course a “shoe that fits all.”

Yes, throughout my relatively limited life journey, there never seems to be a time when—according to the fear-promoters and doomsday predictors—that we were not (and yet are not) destined to soon self-destruct in some manner.

Nevertheless, there has always existed—and yet to this day exists—unlimited hope! A rock-solid protection against even the worst of our concerns! 

That so-called "hope and protection" (or more likely our "worst threat") of course being “more government”—funded by sufficient numbers of taxpaying citizens consumed in ignorance, apathy, complacency, compliance, denial, greed, and . . . yes you guessed it . . . “fear.” 

                                                             —William James Moore.