Against Hysteria

by Will on January 29, 2010

When did we become a nation of scaredy-cats?

Tagged as: airlines, hysteria

Will writes from Washington, D.C. (well, Arlington, Virginia). You can reach him at willblogcorrespondence at gmail dot com.

{ 8 comments }

1 Jaybird January 29, 2010 at 9:44 am

When we started having more people in their late 30′s with toddlers than we had people in their early 20′s with or without them.

2 Gold Star for Robot Boy January 29, 2010 at 10:31 am

When politicians made the connections that fear = votes.

3 Dave S. January 29, 2010 at 12:05 pm

We have a winner! Please proceed shoeless through full-body-scan security to pick up your prize.

4 North January 29, 2010 at 10:39 am

If I were to guess I’d say it was roughly one generation after we defeated the old specter of death of children before ten being common. Once the majority (vast majority) of the population had never experienced loosing a child as a fact of life then they started having fewer of them and also started coddling the ones they had more.

5 Nob Akimoto January 29, 2010 at 10:40 am

We do remember that there was a lot of fear mongering going on in the late 19th and early 20th century against the whole “anarchist menace” and the scary scary German/Irish/Russian immigrants that were coming to destroy the fabric of American society, right?

6 Aaron January 29, 2010 at 11:21 am

I don’t understand why we give the terrorists exactly what they want by having a collective freakout for months afterwards.

7 Mike Schilling January 29, 2010 at 2:57 pm

Among so-called conservatives, it came during the Bush Jr. Administration, when the so-called part of less government wanted nothing more than for the president to “keep us safe”.

8 Jason Kuznicki February 1, 2010 at 2:46 pm

H. L. Mencken observed the tendency in his own day. It’s hardly anything new. Only the focus changes.

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