Since 9/11, it has been consistently drummed into our heads by the government, with all its alerts and multi-colored alarms, that terrorists are everywhere and even your next door neighbor could be one. As a result, the government's promotion of fear and paranoia has moved us closer to an Orwellian state where citizens inform on one another. The result is that the citizens often do the job of the police and no longer use good judgment before reporting their neighbors. In the process, such informing citizens are doing away with their own freedoms.
These tactics are not new to the world. The Nazi and Soviet secret police of former regimes were infamous for such tactics. The police controlled the people through fear, and the subsequent result was a totalitarian state. They turned their respective population into a society of informers.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning author and former Soviet dissident, once spoke of how fear destroys the will of the people. He noted how the Russian people would kneel inside the doors of their apartments, pressing their ears to listen when the KGB came at midnight to arrest a neighbor who had spoken out against the government. Solzhenitsyn said that if all the people would have come out and driven off the secret police, sheer public opinion would have demoralized the effort to subdue a free people. But fear and paranoia kept the people at bay.
We should not be afraid of government agents, whether employed by the FBI, the military or local authorities. Their salaries are paid through our tax dollars. Supposedly, they are our servants. Truly free societies do not function that way. Our fear of government servants is a clear indication of ominous things to come. If citizens are too frightened to use their freedoms, then those freedoms will become extinct. And the darkness will be complete.
John W. Whitehead
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org
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