“This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. 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.”

FDR, Inaugural Speech, 1932

America has become the antithesis of FDR’s lamentation. A significant percentage of the American population has become fearful of being afraid. That is what all the worry over offending everyone about everything, “safe spaces”, restrictions on speech, and prohibitions on anything that might disagree with the presumed current cultural gestalt.

Like Obama (and to some extent, Donald Trump) FDR ran a stealth campaign, not revealing his true agenda to build a government controlled Leviathan to dominate the political and economic landscape. According to the website History Matters managed by George Mason University:

Franklin D. Roosevelt had campaigned against Herbert Hoover in the 1932 presidential election by saying as little as possible about what he might do if elected. Through even the closest working relationships, none of the president-elect’s most intimate associates felt they knew him well, with the exception perhaps of his wife, Eleanor. The affable, witty Roosevelt used his great personal charm to keep most people at a distance. In campaign speeches, he favored a buoyant, optimistic, gently paternal tone spiced with humor. But his first inaugural address took on an unusually solemn, religious quality. And for good reason—by 1933 the depression had reached its depth. 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.”

FDR’s speech continued:

“In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”

The perennial gun control hysteria and the Democrat “sit in” on the floor of the House of Representatives are just the latest examples of the fear that FDR noted (and also stoked to ease his Leviathan into gear). Seeing the tweet about the woman who called for gun legislation due to a bike tire blowing out in Union Station exemplifies the pervasive and irrational fear of everything. I’m surprised some of these people can muster the courage to get out of bed in the morning and I am left to wonder if America is in the grip of a fear so strong that a significant number of our fellow citizens are willing to give up their freedom to be shielded by the cold, mechanical arms of a beckoning Leviathan.

Some will say that this is a result of a feminization of America – but I disagree. It is an instance of mass hysteria, a national case of panphobia – a fear of everything – created and supported by a political class for political gain. A fearful people are a malleable, controllable people. If I can make you fear the future, I can get you to do just about anything if I promise to protect you from your fears. The progressives are promising just that and as confident as their promises sound, history proves that no person or Earthly entity can deliver on such a promise. Only the individual can have that kind of courage.