In the darkest days of the depression with fascism on the march in Europe, Franklin Roosevelt urged his countrymen to resist succumbing to “...nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.”
Paul Krugman contrasts Roosevelt's call to action to that of the Republican presidential candidates who have made fear and "unreasonable, unjustified terror" the "centerpiece of their campaigns."
From Giuliani to Huckabee they offer no vision of the future or solutions to the nation's problems. Their platform is one of fear of terrorists, fear of immigrants, fear of cities, fear of secularists, etc.
As a nation we love to celebrate the "greatest generation." We forget that their greatest contribution was to embrace Roosevelt's basic truth from his first Inaugural address that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself...."
Read the entire column.
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