The Only Thing That Will Save Us Now Is Fear Itself

On March 4, 1933, millions of Americans sat beside their radios listening to Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivering his first inaugural address, in which he famously declared that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  (Joe Biden thinks he watched the speech on television, but that's the subject for an essay in Current Psychiatry, and this is American Thinker.)  FDR gave Americans the confidence and courage to cope with the Great Depression, which is among the reasons he's one of our very greatest presidents.

I hate to say this, but right now the only thing that can save our country is -- fear itself.  Our government is bankrupt, its deficit is insurmountable, and at both the federal and state levels, we've run up more debt than can possibly be repaid.  This isn't a political thing; it's a numbers thing.  Either everything I've ever learned about math and economics is wrong, or we're on the verge of going down.  The only possible way to come through safely -- and even so, the odds are against us -- will be to frighten ourselves so badly that we'll be willing to do things that in normal times we simply could not imagine doing.

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