I’m fond of saying that history is the guide to our future.
Unfortunately, it is most often a guide to what IS going to happen, rather than a warning against what to avoid.
I am sure that I do not need to catalog the broad spectrum of fear that has begun to grip the nation in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. We have seen it all before – from loyalty tests to internment camps, from special watch lists to cynical politicians riding the wave for their own special interest benefit.
More importantly: every single time in the past that we have abandoned our Constitutional ideals in the face of fear, we have regretted it, apologized for it, outlawed it, paid a heavy moral price for it. Afterwards.
Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
Once. Just once I would like to see us control our lizard brains with our supposed higher-order functions. Once, just once, I’d like to see us turn to our fear-mongering politicians, our propagandist pundits, our bleeding-lead journalists and say:
“STOP! STFU!. You will NOT rule us with fear this time. This time we are going to remember our history and we’re not going to repeat ourselves.”
