I've always found it ironic how the conservative movement--a movement that ascended to power largely on a message of "law and order"--has long been so dismissive of actual lawlessness perpetrated in pursuit of its own goals. Do I really have to back up this assertion? Al Gonzales, secret tribunals, torture, Bush v. Gore, impeachment--and that's just from the past 10 years. We could go further back to Oliver North, but it really isn't necessary.
I've often wondered about this contradiction--hypocrisy, really--but I've been reading Rick Perlstein's Nixonland and he mentions the phenomenon off-handedly by suggesting that such things are laudable if one believes the barbarians are at the gates. And that's true of conservatism, isn't it? It just so happens that Americans are susceptible to paranoia over existential threats--from terrorism to kidnapping--that are worrisome but far less dire than one would think from watching the news. Kidnapping is a really difficult one to understand--kids are actually less likely to be kidnapped by a stranger today than they were forty years ago. Most kidnappings that do take place (and I believe it's about 100 a year nationally) are perpetrated by family members--i.e. the child's father takes the child from the mother who has custody. It just doesn't happen.
All of this is by way of saying that Americans are susceptible to fearmongering in a way that other groups aren't. Perhaps that's not an original observation--I think Bowling for Columbine made a similar point--but that's what I've been thinking about.
