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For the second half of the 20th Century, the government kept its people united over fear of the Soviet Union. And the Press filled the newspapers, radio and television with constant reports on the threat of nuclear warfare at the hands of the USSR.
If the Soviets launched a new nuclear submarine, it was bigger news than when we launched one.  Spies selling our secrets to the Russians made headlines more than once.
Nobody thought much about being a Democrat or a Republican. We were just wondering if we would survive a nuclear attack. Cities built bomb shelters and stocked them with provisions to last several months.
Meanwhile the Soviets were doing the same thing with their people--filling their heads full of fear that the United States hated them and might launch an attack any minute.
That all ended when the Berlin Wall came down. Within days, the Soviet Union fell apart and individual states declared their independence from Moscow.
That left the people with nothing to fear...so the politicians created new fears. Bush convinced the American people to support invading Iraq with the fear that he had weapons of mass destruction that he was just waiting to place in terrorist's hands.
Al Gore began building fear in the American psyche over the threat that global warming would destroy our planet. Though I generally believe that global warming is occuring, the Press and the politicians have used it as another scare tactic.
And what about the media pundits who every day use language designed to instill fear in their followers about the opposite party and the President.
It's the way that politicians and political pundits such as Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and all their cronies keep their following....by instilling fear in them that the sky is going to fall if every Democrat is not run out of Washington.
The only thing the Press is interested in is ratings....Glenn Beck has said he really doesn't give a flying flip how people vote...that he is just an entertainer.
Nonetheless, he is among the worst to use fear tactics to keep his ratings up. Politicians are no better. They told outright lies about health care reform to scare the public.
However, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt so eloquently stated in his First Inaugural Address,
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.
There is one great weapon against fear...and that is skepticism. If we learn to accept no one's assertion at face value, choosing instead to research the subject ourselves, we can defeat fear.
For fear thrives from lack of knowledge and lack of understanding. It breeds on blind acceptance of political pundits and commentators. It permeates our every action if we do not take responsibility to educate ourselves.
It is no sin to be ignorant; it is just a sin to stay that way.
How right FDR was, and is.