A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Abraham Lincoln

Plato’s Allegory was less about fear of the unknown and more about the tendency for people to accept whatever they see in front of them rather than using the gift of reason to contemplate the divine truth. For that reason, he thought that hyper-rational philosophers should rule.

The problem is that most people don’t take time to rationally plot their way through every aspect of life (though on some level they make rational calculations in the short-term), taking into consideration the long-term effects of any one decision. Thus the philosopher or the brujo are needed to help guide the pack, clan, city-state, etc. There are natural hierarchies among humans, like it or not. Does that mean that the smartest or strongest have a right to be in charge and the rest of us must obey them? No. But most of us look for people who have lived more or studied more than we have to help us make sense of our path ahead. Some of us take what is useful and discard the rest and others reject everything or accept everything. People of the cloth or even those of the political persuasion can be good or bad and can focus on fear or not–that’s just like any one else with authority. Clergy are not essentially fear mongers because they sometimes invoke fear any more than my mother is a fear monger because she warned me not to join a gang because I might end up in prison or dead. She was wrong when she tried to get my sister not to date a black guy because my Dad would flip! But it’s not essentially who she is.

If it weren’t from some very bold people of the cloth–and even a few politicians–many of the rights movements you mention would have never happened. Who but a Cesar Chavez, a Dr. King, a Gandhi, a Dorothy Day, a Jacques Maritain, a Malcom X, even a Tijerina (though he did use fear hear and there too); could have commanded the respect and influence to move such movements to some measure of success? Sure the grassroots where pushing some of them to act, but even behind the scenes clergy and leaders had prominent roles even while some of their brethren were part of the problem (think the intended audience of the letter from Birmingham Jail).

Yes the Orwellian Pigs are among our leaders, but that does not mean fear per se is an absolute evil. We should fear the and lament the loss of our civil and human rights to corporate interests. We should fear the failure of our public education system. We should fear the absence of true dialogue in many parts of the blogosphere and in the news media as you point out (fear mongering by the way, but good fear mongering . We should fear the everlasting wars in the Middle East…I think that’s enough preaching–I better shut up. I’m afraid someone might accuse me of being a brujo.

This article itself is an example of fear mongering against conservative, Christian, anti-abortion, ‘marriage is between a man and woman’, good American citizens who believe you should get in line and come here legally if you want to join the American club.

This is so true, and sadly, the people who listen to AM talk radio seem to be predisposed to not wanting to expand their minds with books, travel or sharing new experiences, so they are easily conned by these nationalistic, ranting con men. The Rush Limbaughs and Lou Dobbs types still have radio shows, and they prey on the fear of people who don’t get out much or who don’t engage with people who are different from them.

Fear mongering is a powerful tool. We also saw what happened with the gay marriage debate in some of the states where gays were allowed to marry, and life went on a usual. But fear kicked in when people starting talking about gay families with school children, etc. and it worked, as anti-gay marriage measures were passed.

Now with Latinos, it is going to be the usual narrative about how we all have a dozen kids, how we supposedly take jobs away from American citizens, while many of us are already citizens and treated like we aren’t. Or that we don’t want to learn English, even though evidence suggests that we assimilate at the same rate as other groups.