The Government Fish Farm

In a recent interview with Vicente Fox, the former Mexican president said that the dictatorial leaders of Venezuela and Bolivia have the mentality of giving their people fish for a day versus teaching them to fish. This was an excellent analogy because it shows how they are keeping their people economically dependent on the government, thus keeping them in power.
The Bush Administration has acted in a similar manner but instead of keeping us economically dependent on the government, they are keeping us emotionally dependent on them. They use fear to keep us in support of the war in Iraq as well as the war on terror. The word "terror" was specifically chosen to strike fear into the American people. By telling us that the war in Iraq is keeping the terrorists at bay leads to support just as them saying that our use of "torture" on terror suspects provides accurate information leading to the capture of more terrorists.
Either way, we have to break free of this fear; the fear of loose borders, terrorism, flying on airplanes, people of Arabic ethnicity and so on. We live in a constant state of paranoia when the real thing we should be fearing is the absolute and unchecked power we are giving our own government. This war in Iraq is all about control; control over policies in the Middle East, oil, a strategic geographic location for U.S. support and even control over the American people through the use of fear. Our daily dose of fish is that our government is doing everything it can to keep us safe from what we fear when we should be the ones doing what we can by getting active in our own government and participating in this democracy.
So, research on your own, learn everything you can about the world you live in and take nothing at face value because only you can form an agenda-free opinion. Teach yourself how to live free of fear and take back control of the direction your country travels because in the end you cannot say that you are free of responsibility. That is the beauty and price of democracy.