Freedom from fear helps uphold our ideals

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in as president in March 1933, the United States was in the throes of the Great Depression and the new president needed to encourage fearful Americans and give them confidence about their future. He assured people that the national economy “will revive and will prosper,” and shared “my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Xenophobia had turned the nation inward following The Great War (now World War I) and isolationism largely controlled foreign and national defense policy – until Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and pulled the United States into World War II. Another wave of xenophobia, specifically directed at Japanese-Americans, put thousands of U.S. citizens in concentration camps. President Ronald Reagan decades later signed a reparations measure.

Fear of Communism, the Soviet Union and the Cold War becoming another world war of nuclear weapons largely drove the wretched witch hunts of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the McCarthy era. Later, fear partly fueled bitter opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin applied the fear-mongering tactics (propaganda, threats, vilification) of the House committee to his Senate Anti-Subversive Subcommittee.

The demagogic tactics of presidential candidate Donald Trump – degrading Mexico and Mexicans; seeking a ban on allowing refugees from Syria; calling for admitting only Christian immigrants – invite comparisons to politicians such as McCarthy, Gov. George Wallace, and Pat Buchanan. Trump is hardly the only current presidential candidate using demagogy.

Fear and misunderstanding of Islam undoubtedly is fueling arson attacks and vandalism at mosques. Indeed, the Associated Press reports “Religious congregations across the United States are concentrating on safety like never before after a season of violence” including shootings at a Charleston church and earlier this month in California. “The Council on American-Islamic Relations said 2015 was shaping up as the worst year ever for mosques in the United States, amid the backlash to the Islamic-extremist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, and the intensifying anti-Muslim rhetoric from Donald J. Trump and others seeking the Republican presidential nomination.”

In a letter published Christmas Day, Bishop Robert E. Guglielmone of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston, wrote that legitimate security concerns “... should not be used as smokescreen to justify heartless and senseless policies that would close our doors to victims of terrorism.” The United States “can continue to be a haven for those – who like Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus – still flee from the modern day Herods.”

Giving in to fears – of terrorists, of Muslims or folks of faiths other than our own, of people who do not look like us, or speak our language – is tantamount to handing victory to the terrorists. Surely we must all be security conscious and willing to report concerning incidents to law enforcement. We must not allow fear to control our lives and certainly not dictate local, state or national public policy.

As Abraham Lincoln urged in his First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861) let us allow our fears to be touched “by the better angels of our nature.”

This story was originally published December 28, 2015 at 7:24 AM with the headline "Freedom from fear helps uphold our ideals."