Note to Dems - please drop the fear frame

This mornning on Bill Press I heard Paul Begala doing Republican bidding. To paraphrase: "We've got a lot of problems in this country - islamofascists overseas want to murder us..."

Apparently Begala didn't listen to Gore's speech the other day:

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

It's especially annoying when Begala, Press, and the rest of the Democratic party knows that this administration has used nothing but fear for the last four years to get exactly what they want. I remember living under the threat of thousands of Soviet missles, and I'm with Gore. Anybody truly worried about a handful of disenfranchised Muslims is a pussy.