For years, Democrats have been accusing the Republican Party of engaging in politics of fear. Yet throughout this few months, since Obama came into power, the “cool” president and his government has caused and warned of various panics in the United States. Most ridiculous has been the swine flu scare which the media and the government have over-hyped. Let’s put the swine flu in perspective for a moment:

Since the start of the year, about 53 people died from different influenza types in the United States. Swine flu so far has, tragically, claimed three lives since it appeared in the US. It looks like regular influenza is much more deadly, yet no alarms are going off, no panic about regular influenza strains, no government officials saying to stay away from “confined places” due to regular influenza. I already know of several friends’ friends’ children reporting that they “have” swine flu and dutifully not going to class. The atmosphere of fear created by the government in ridiculous. Let’s get a grip, people. If that’s how people react to a disease like the flu, imagine what would happen if the timid elements realized that so far this year more than 4,600 people have died due to drunk driving! We might just bring prohibition back!

Add to this panic the words of our “beloved” president about imminent economic catastrophe if we didn’t do exactly as he said and passed the enormous stimulus package that spends unnecessarily on special projects, and North Korea, in sensing the president’s weakness, illegally launching rockets, and reports that Iran will be able to produce nukes within the year, and possible plans to bring relocate terrorists from Gitmo to the US mainland… and what you have is an administration that has elevated the level of fear in this country to unnecessarily high levels.

Maybe we should be afraid, not of economic catastrophe or the flu, but of a government that uses these unwarranted fears to spend more money, raise more taxes, and make government bigger and more powerful. Next thing you know someone will set fire to the Reichstag building… and there’s no easy way back from that.

-AG