culture of fear

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” the famous line from President Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Speech is the buzz-line ahead of the Obama inauguration on Tuesday. 

Along those lines, a few words on “fear” from someone close to Obama:

“I am tired of being afraid. I am tired of living in a country where every decision that we’ve made over the last ten years wasn’t for something but it was because people told us that we had to fear something. We had to fear people who looked different from us. Fear people who believed in things that were different from us. Fear of one another right here in our own backyards. I am so tired of fear and I don’t want my girls to live in a country, in a world based on fear.” – Michelle Obama, February 2008.