The Only Thing We Have to Fear...

I remember that, in the aftermath of 9/11, I was angry. I was angry, of course, at the terrorists who perpetrated this, but I was also angry with Major League Baseball.

Now, I may have been one of only a handful of people in the country that was angry with MLB, but I was. Why? Because they cancelled/suspended games. In my opinion, if we started changing our behavior, and cowering in fear, then the terrorists had won.

As soon as games commenced, I promised that not only would I attend the nearest MLB game, but that I would take my two sons (at the time aged 3 and 4) to the game with me. It was a memorable game. Actually, I don't remember anything about the game itself, but the memory of going to the game will be burned into my brain forever.

It was at Dodger Stadium, but instead of Dodger Blue, we wore red, white and blue. My boys were not old enough to really pay attention to the game, so I had brought rolls of patriotic stickers that were soon plastered over my body like patriotic chain mail. I let the boys wander a little around our section on the field level, and they passed out stickers to everyone. I looked up at my older boy, who gave me a look that said to me, "look what I am about to do." With that, he bolted - straight for the field.

I think this is every young parent's worst nightmare. There I was, one parent with two small boys, heading in opposite directions. I barked at my youngest to stay put, and took off after my son, reaching him just as he reached the fence along the right-field foul line. I don't know if he would have tried to make it over the wall, but that scene had played out in my head, and to this day, I don't know if I would have gone over the wall after him or not.

I was reminded of my anger over the missing games from the 2001 Major League Baseball season, by an article I read this weekend in Salon, by Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald, in turn refers to an article by David Brooks, which postulates that we, as a people, have adapted an adolescent view that government can and should keep us safe. In Greenwald's words, this becomes a "most cringe-inducing, child-like formulation."

Ultimately, both Brooks and Greenwald are correct. In the aftermath of 9/11, did any of us believe that it would be some eight years before we would see another terrorist attack on American soil? I think that, when we saw the smoke rising from those towers, and the Pentagon, we viewed it as an act of war, and we expected there to be other attacks to come. Only years of relative safety and security could have bred that kind of expectation. The federal government may have, as one of its primary directives, national security, but it is both unrealistic and naive to expect perfection it its pursuit thereof.

As a nation, we have come to look to our government to protect us, to keep us safe, to keep us from feeling pain. This is not, by any means, confined to national security. In everything from health care reform to global warming, we are asking to be kept safe and pain-free. We expect it from other areas of life, too. Did your doctor misdiagnose you? See you in court, because that shouldn't be allowed.

To quote the Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride, "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." Not only is life full of pain, it is that constant threat of pain, and fear of it, that motivates us. But we have been sold something, indeed, and it comes with a price. Every time we try to buy protection from some of our pain, we pay for it with a bit of our liberty. Greenwald points this out in regard to national security, but it is just as true when it comes to health care and global warming as well.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his First Inaugural Address, said that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." While it may not actually be the only thing we should be afraid of, it should, perhaps be our biggest fear. So many of the things that we have been afraid of have turned out to be unfounded, whether it be Alar in apples, or the threat of heterosexual aids, the coming ice-age predicted in the early 1970s, or the dire threat of second-hand smoke, the cure is often worse than the cause, whether real or merely perceived.

Why did I go to that baseball game with my boys in 2001? Because I wasn't going to let fear win out. We need to accept that "life is pain", because with every bit of pain we try to take away, we are taking a little bit of "living." Fort Hood massacre-ist Nadal Hassan wrote, as the final bullet-point of a presentation, said that "we love death more than you love life." We need to take this as a challenge, to love life, and live it, without fear, more than they love death, and more than we fear death. When we can do that, fear will have lost its hold on us, and we will be truly free.