Fight fear with freedom

[Briar]

Fight fear with freedom

Let's all take a deep breath. We should not let rational fears lead us into irrational laws

Mary Riddell

... A month on from the London bombings, anxieties unleashed by terrorism must be contained. If not, they will mushroom into something hideous.

The Sun is for letting rip. Its 'Lawless Britain' campaign explains why we should all be petrified. In the paper's analysis, our neighbours are paedophiles, our countryside is being over-run by gypsies, our towns by yobs and our mosques by extremists. Our juvenile offenders, much like our MPs, are off on holiday, courtesy of the state, and our police officers (whose shoot-to-kill policy seems too limp-wristed for Sun tastes) are neutered by political correctness.

...

This scaremongering might be too crass to mention, had it not found an instant echo in Tony Blair's measures to make the country safer. No one would question workable new provisions, even though countering terror usually founders for want of intelligence or evidence, not because of any lack of laws. Unfortunately, too much of Mr Blair's nebulous and inflammatory wish list appears to have been compiled on the back of a beer mat by the more rabid patrons of Millwall FC.

...

The Sun is wrong. Britain is not a lawless place. It is a civilised society trying to come to terms with great tragedy. It is also staring over a precipice. Government, and Parliament, have a choice. They can move to quell the first symptoms of hysteria. Or they can unleash the pandemic and watch it spread.


http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1544130,00.html

[MissMarple]

1. So, a lesson in fear...who do you the students might have been?

This posits a most curious question, who were the students in this little exercise, and additionally, who set it all up? ...Interesting...

" As Joanna Bourke points out, in Fear, A Cultural History, the America reduced to frenzy by a 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds was gripped by social dislocation that primed people to believe Martians really had invaded the East Coast."