Get A Grip!

I just read a message in fj's journal about child predators and the legal impossibility of parents to monitor their children's text messages. I also ranted a bit here in my own journal (friends-locked due to intemperate language, sorry) about the inability of Congress or the courts to remedy any of the Constitution-shredding legislation of the past few years.

I'm finding that both of these issues have at bottom a simple fact: It is trivial to scare the vast majority of people out of all rational thought, but it is impossible to reason the frightened back to rationality. In other words (gmjambear's), "Fear trumps common sense."

I think this nation would be so much better off if our legislators would give their constituents credit for being rational and resisting the Chicken Little call of the executive branch, and we the constituents gave our legislators the same credit for being rational and not patronizing when dealing with the lesser-informed (and more easily frightened) among us.

In other words, We the People need to get a grip, and even more so our elected representatives.