To paraphrase George C. Scott as Patton, that's a load of horse dung.
Goldberg's piece is an exercise in contradiction. He admits that fear is a largely irrational emotion but that we should understand - he actually means accede - to it.
The Founding Fathers feared tyranny? I would say their feeling was anger more than anything. Anger at the raw deals and anger at the crown's capriciousness and apathy. Fear leads to paralysis. Anger leads to action.
When people say they fear a fascist state because their pet fascist (Hillary) lost an election, how are we meant to understand such madness? When they say they fear internment camps and mass roundups, why we are we bound to assuage such paranoia?
When lefties 'fear' men and women using anatomically-bifurcated toilet facilities, what sane response might there be to such insanity?
The blind, unwavering support for Obama's lawless regime and their overnight antagonism towards a new president whose 'crime' is that he has an R after his name demonstrates that the other side have lost it all: their capacity for thought, logic, even basic comprehension of the issues because they have been primed to kick off at the slightest provocation or perception of their pet -isms. They are human fire alarms - they make an ear-splitting noise but can't tell you where the fire is or how to put it out.
These dogs can't be retrained so they must be restrained. Permanently. They can think whatever they like after that.
Bullcrap
That Pantywaist can cower in fear all he wants, but kindly don’t suggest what real men (and women) should do or feel.
Seriously, isn’t there any profound conservative intellectual who will write an *updated* version of Nineteen-Eighty-Four?
It wouldn’t be a book of fiction, other than showing what exists *right now* as it is used to abuse a fictional character, an “average American” Winston Smith.
Eisenhower warned against the power of the “military industrial complex”, which today has grown to (in order of raw power), to become the “Intelligence-Police-Military-Globalist-Corporate-Bureaucratic-Political (DemSoc) Amero narcotic-sexual depravity unistate”.
The novel could be voluminous, incorporating the vastness of modern American totalitarianism. It could likewise include some of the anti-intellectual elements of Fahrenheit 451, showing public schools that no longer educate but indoctrinate, interactive media that also spy and control, the terrible dehumanization that all of this brings, and the decline and decay it is visiting on us all.
By comparison, the Airstrip One of Nineteen-Eighty-Four would look like a quaint and friendly place, even if overrun by primitive Muslims.