by Logan Albright
In a career spent fighting for human liberty, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed some uncomfortable truths about the human condition. Economists, politicians, and pundits tend to believe that the only thing required for individuals to embrace free markets and limited government is data. If only people knew the statistics that prove that liberty works better than coercion, they would at once become enthusiastic libertarians.
But the reality is, people don’t reject freedom because they are ignorant. They reject it because they are afraid. It turns out that for many, freedom is less important than a feeling of security. Even when the conscious mind knows that those promising safety are not really capable of delivering it, the instinct to quell the sensation of fear, perhaps the most primal emotion we possess, is so great as to completely obliterate rational thought and sane judgment.
Our task is therefore far more difficult than we ever imagined. If I want people to reject the policies that would lead to totalitarianism, we have to conquer not only ignorance, but fear itself.
The purpose of this book is to catalogue the many ways in which governments use fear to expand their own power, to explain why we fall for it, and to demonstrate the terrible things that happen when we allow our emotions to take control over our otherwise rational minds. The best remedy, not only for fear, but for depression and pessimism in general, is perspective. By stepping away from the day-to-day minutia of the news cycle and taking a look at broader historical trends, we can partially immunize ourselves from giving into panic and becoming overly reactionary. At the end, I hope to provide a few more tips on how you can safeguard yourself from making the same mistake we have made all too many times before, namely that of surrendering your most basic rights in the hope that someone else will protect you from whatever the evil, real or imagined, of the current moment may be.
So, if you want to live a more fearless, more courageous life, if you want to act rather than react, and if you want to stop getting duped by political opportunists, read on!