Fear is an evolutionary trait that warns us of possible danger. It is usually illusory but sometimes it is real. We rely on our mind, education, and experience to tell us when danger is real. The worst thing we can do is to take our cue from people who live out of fear or worse, those who have something to gain by us being afraid. We have that too often today. It is not new, the founders of America were clear that governments that encouraged fear and ruled by it were tyrannies. Their ideas were summarized by John Basil Barnhill in a debate on Socialism in 1914. Fear is a wonderful controlling mechanism. It is a controlling mechanism used by tyrants.

Welcome to SabersEdge Discourse #205 – Posted on 10 January 2026 (revisiting a topic originally posted on 09 AUG 2022.

Before we get started, I need to call your attention to our need to keep the lights on at SabersEdge. Our only support comes from our readers; those who wish to join us in our quest to Reforge the Foundations of Western Civilization so that we can then use that foundation to boldly go into a bright future. If you like our content then please support SabersEdge.Online by sharing the website and content and our memes, recommending it to others, and telling your friends and family about us. We have no big, corporate or political backing so we are only capable of our work with your support. I know times are tough, and they are tough for us here at SabersEdge too. If there is any way you are able, and if you care about our future, you can be part of the solution by supporting us on: GiveSendGo | Reforging the Foundations of the West. To guide our work please leave your comments and feel free to contact me personally at Daniel.Saber@sabersedge.online. Now let’s ride to the sound of the guns and work together to reforge the foundations of the West. We mustn’t let our fears deter us.

Today we face a different trial. But just as in Thomas Paine’s day too many will never reach teir potential and become the person they were meant to be. And if too many do that, we will not be the country, or the world that we were meant to be. To build a better future we have to be willing to face it and push through to the end.

Unfortunately for us and for liberty. The usefulness of fear has been discovered by all manner of manipulators in the West, Republican globalist RINOs, Neocons, and the Democratic Party of the 20th and 21st Century have learned to wield fear to control and direct masses of people. Today, in fact, it seems to be the preferred tool of the CIA and intelligence meddlers throughout the world. Most especially ti it the tool used by the modern Democratic Party to mobilize their base. People are slowly waking up to the fact that the Democratic Party of today is a very different animal than your grandfathers Democratic Party or the Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson or Jefferson Davis and absolutely nothing like the original Democratic Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson, which is actually more like the Republican whose name is also drawn from this namesake.

Even worse, it is the only controlling mechanism that cowards understand and use, and today, it seems to be the only controlling mechanism used by the 21st Century Democratic Party. But maybe I am being too generous, for it was a primary motivator used by Democratic Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt when they carried us into the two World Wars, Harry S. Truman who threw us into the Korean War, and Lyndon B. Johnson who carried us into the Viet Nam War. In fact, when I was growing up, before the Neo-Cons and Globalist RINOs (personified by the Bush and Cheney families and others,) took control of the Republican Party, we used to say: “Democrats Get us into Wars and Republicans get us out of them.”

Thus, we have a warning for today as one by one the governments and media of today throw one fear after another at us in the hope that something sticks deeply into our animal brain and we will be completely controllable.

Robespierre, one of the architects of the bloody French revolution, spoke truly when he said that education reduces fear while ignorance increases it. But what do we do when so many schools have educated our people in ignorance and dogma?

They have not prepared people to have liberty and control their own lives they have prepared them to be sheep who can be easily led by fear and emotion. This should be a crime in any nation organized upon the principles of freedom. Mayhap it could even be called treason.

It was Herman Melville who said that “Ignorance is the parent of fear.” So perhaps there is a pattern in that we have government schools that fail to teach and a government that spread fear about nearly everything from fear for the climate, to fear in the economy, fear of disease, and even teaching us to fear each other.

Another wonderful author, Rudyard Kipling (both of these were authors schools used to teach by the way,) said “Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.” And they use our own fears against us.

Fear is a useful tool for those in power. Sensationalizing matters into a crisis gets us to click on news and empowers them with our attention. Thus, the media lies to us to get “clicks.”

I am over 60, and I marvel today at how every storm today is sensationalized into some kind of “mega-storm” were even a few inches of snow or a little ice are a world ending crisis. Further, I marvel at the world-ending fear that has filled our younger generations about Global Warming when we are in an Ice Age. When I was in Junior High (in the early 1970s,) we were told that by the year 2000 most of America would be covered in a glacial ICE SHEET because pollution was destroying the world’s ability to regulate global temperature. I didn’t understand why “old people” couldn’t wake up to the danger. The answer, they said, was to fight deforestation so the planet could cleanse itself. (A good idea in any age.) The other suggestion was that we convert all our use from paper bags and paper packaging to plastic or foam, both of which were artificially produced. Buying their products was the ‘answer’ to our fears. Really, now we know that microplastics are actually in our bloodstream due to all of the use of plastic in our society. It pollutes our fields and our oceans and kills bird life. We were lied to, and they used our fear to sell products.

Then, as we approached 2000 and the glacial ice sheets we had been told would cover Europe and North America never happened. In fact, it was obviously not happening. I watched real time as the fear motivator changed to global warming.

Today, media has generated more fear than we had for the world-ending threat of pollution motivated glaciers that would cover the industrialized world in glacial ice because it harangues us daily from our phones, computers, television, and even in our schools. My Dad always said don’t believe everything you hear and only half of what you see. Only sheep believe everything they are told.

Let me put this in context for you. When I was young, we had Love Canal (a community whose ground and water was so polluted a staggering number of children were born with birth defects and people were dying early from cancer [see: Love Canal – Wikipedia ]). Also, in the late 70s and early 80s the RHINE RIVER CAUGHT ON FIRE! Let me be clear. One of the largest Rivers in Europe caught on fire because of all the pollution that was being poured in it by the BENELUX countries! Trying to search the internet this event has been hidden as the entire first couple pages are dedicated to a fireworks event along the Rhine River. There are some articles on clean-up but the utterly embarrassing events of the Rhine River catching fire at least twice in my life-time, and which spawned a massive international clean-up by countries along the Rhine River (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, and Switzerland,) has been hidden from view. So, I say again, build your own library of books where no one can change history on you. . Looking around today we are told once again how we will all die if we don’t invest in the very people who polluted our world to begin with. Suddenly now, industry brings us what in America is called the New Green Deal, where if we just invest in their “new” idea they will save us. Just as they once got us to go head over heals into plastics until we contaminated our own blood.

Fear is indeed a powerful motivator.

I have come to believe that this is true. Of all the liars in the world, the worst are our own fears. In my own life when I was young, I was afraid of just about everything. I shudder when I consider all the opportunities in life that I missed because of fear. Fortunately, I was still young when I realized my mistake and that most of what I feared never came about and I became convinced that if I could have all of the time back that I spent needlessly worrying about things that never happened I would live well past a hundred. I resolved to not let fear keep me from acting. Tony Campolo said that many of us were taught to say a children’s prayer and one of the lines were “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” He said that we should more properly pray “If I should wake before I die.” because we tend to go around half dead mindlessly going through the motions or cowering in fear of death, injury, (or worse) ridicule.

It is even used to get us to tune into the weather channel. When I was young, we went out on our porch to look for nearby funnel clouds of tornados. If we saw one we went in the basement. Now, understand, I lived in Lincoln NE which seems to be in a natural depression and tornados never touched down. Now, Lincoln has grown passed the safe limits of this depression and its outskirts seem to be susceptable to tornados. But, anyway, American’s approach to danger was not to run and hide as it is today. Sometimes we tended to wait too long. Once, we were watching TV and the windows began to vibrate and hum due to a windstorm that had come on us without warning. As I hurried my kids into the basement and was shutting the door the window shattered. After the storm passed and I went back into our TV room there was a shard of glass over 8 inches long embedded into the wall opposite the window. I shudder to think what would have happened had we been a little slower.

Today, fear is spread over normal thunderstorms and a couple inches of snow as the television (what my dad used to call “the boob tube,”) gins up fear over every event. Perhaps schools should bring back something practical like driver’s education classes so people know what they are doing on the roads in snow and rain instead of instilling terror in our youth. Then maybe there wouldn’t be such a crisis with every weather event.

I remember my brother crawling out the kitchen window because we couldn’t get our door open due to snow in Nebraska – and we had a three-step entryway to get up to the door. Later, when I went outside onto the sidewalk the snow on either side was deeper than I was tall (this is one of my earliest memories when I was pre-school age.) There had been so much snow against the screen/glass doors of our house that it couldn’t be opened, and my older brother had to climb out the window and shovel the steps off so we could push the screen door open and get out.

Today, the self-reliance of the past, even as someone in their early teens seems to be gone.

Today, the government, media, and advertisers all know that if they can keep us afraid then we are more easily controlled. Through fear they manipulate our voting, our purchasing, our health decisions, and overall suppress the people. From the use of advertising, news, as well as late-night police raids, demonstrations of force, and crushing dissenters, tyrannies have acted to control us since before the American Revolution – although media was much less influential than it is now, putting more weight on force than subtlety or brainwashing through repetition.

For one last example, I was watching a Weather Channel report (back when I trusted the Weather Channel,) and the commentator on the scene was straining against the wind and talking about how bad the storm was there when two young men in shorts and sneakers walked casually behind him talking normally on the other side of the street. So, there he was pretending he was covering some dangerous storm and he didn’t even see the two men walking normally behind him. I can think of no better example of how media lies to you and uses fear to get “clicks” and to influence your behavior.

Americans used to eat fear and spit it out.

Since the beginning of time, and the only way to stop this manipulation by fear is the truth, and SabersEdge Foundation is dedicated to bringing this to you. Unfortunately, today the truth (as well as more lies and misinformation,) is found on alternate media. Finding the truth is not easy. You need to reject sources when you discover they purposely lied to you and find alternate media to rely on. While SabersEdge cannot be manipulated by powerful politicians or investors we present a truth that is today rarely seen on our TV screens and too many people reject it. They are slow to accept something different. However, people often trust their family and friends. That is why your recommendations are so important to us.

“Obstacles are like wild animals.  They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can.  If they see you are afraid of them… they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.” — Orison Swett Marden

Bullies of all types, whether they are in government or the school yard fear someone standing up to them.

I have heard it said that when we are young our principles are the foundations upon which we will change the world; but too often when we get old, they become the caves that we hide in.

As I said, most fears never come to fruition but tyrants also, as I have said, seem to be motivated by fear, and what they fear most is the people rising to resist. You saw this in Canada, the Netherlands, and China today, Czechoslovakia, and other communist countries in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. And we have seen it all the way back in ancient Greece.

“If you’re not willing to risk, you cannot grow. If you cannot grow, you cannot be your best. If you cannot be your best, you cannot be happy. If you cannot be happy, what else is there?” — Les Brown

and,

“The best way out is always through.” — Robert Frost

Thus, we see that humanity has known for thousands of years how to deal with fear and how powerful fear can be with us, humans. So we need to bravely face these fears and not let them stop us from living in freedom and happiness. That will destroy not only our own lives but the lives of our children, grandchildren, friends, and relatives. Overcoming our fears and finding true liberty is only achieved by confronting them and finding they are not as terrible as we imagined. So many, more eloquent than I have spoken on this I feel the desire to highlight their words.

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” — Marcus Aurelius

In the end, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, the Bible, and innumerable other sources had it right when they said it is not what we profess to believe but the actions that define us. We used to have a word for people who acted out of fear and could not rise above their fears to live life and do what was right. We called them cowards.

“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.” — Frank Herbert in the Dune series.

We have lost resilience we used to be taught at a young age. Now children are raised to fear and not to overcome by parents who would rather “wrap their kids in bubble wrap” and protect them rather than teach them to make their own way in the world.

When I was a child, in Junior High School, I had my own paper route I was walking through deep snow. It was wet and crusty and I found if I walked carefully, I could walk on top of the snow instead of sinking into it. I had three houses side by side of wealthy families with huge yards. Although we weren’t supposed to cut across the grass as paper carriers, it was so much quicker than walking all the way around on the sidewalk, and I delivered in the early morning hours when few were up, so I cut across the yards and would slip through the split rail fence. I was walking carefully, concentrating on not falling through the snow because in snow was more than knee deep and it made it really hard to walk. Also, snowplows had passed by once but there was still a foot of snow in the street as well. So, there I was delivering my papers to my customers in my early teens as a Junior High Student and pushing through the snow blowing in my face as I concentrated on walking carefully so I wouldn’t sink into the snow when I thought that surely, I should have reached the fence by now. I looked around and a great pine tree was to my left. The pine tree that was in the neighbor’s yard! I realized I had completely walked over the split rail fence and into the next yard without realizing it the snow was so deep! Seriously, if we had cell phones back then I probably would have called my parents to see if they could come and get me but in I was alone in the storm and had to finish my job delivering papers. My parents had ensured I was bundled up and warm but by the time I was done walking the 16 block route my fingers and toes were frost bit and my mom ran some water over them until i was beginning to feel them again and then set me in front of the heat register and told me to flex and massage my fingers and toes until “they came back.”

When my first son was in diapers I was reading as he played. Toddling across the floor he fell on his butt. Just as I was about to say, “Are you OK buddy?” I saw him look at me from the ground to see if I had reacted. When I continued reading and watching him out of the corner of my eye he just got up and continued playing. I suddenly realized how much my sons would take their cues from my actions. After that, as my son’s grew I never let them know when I was afraid for their safety. I would call them back from some acts, but if we were at the park and they were climbing to high and it sent my heart in my throat I just moved up to watch him and, hopefully, to be able to catch him if he fell. But I demonstrated no fear. Because of that, I got more than a few gray hairs. However, my sons pushed on through things that I didn’t know they could do.

It is up to us to choose what messages we will accept and which ones we reject. In part we make that choice by what we choose to watch, to read, and to listen to. Too many, works of music, or fiction today radiate hopelessness or acceptance of mediocrity. Is that who you want to be? Is that how you saw yourself growing up. The Bible says that our inward longing that is in our hearts was put their by God to make us into the person he created us to be. Yet the world tells us not to even try. If the fear the world rams down our throat wasn’t there…who would you want to be? Who did God Create you to be?

BE THAT PERSON!