"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
-- Wendell Phillips, (1811-1884), abolitionist, orator and columnist for The Liberator, in a speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852, according to The Dictionary of Quotations edited by Bergen Evans
There IS a difference between being constantly vigilant ... and constantly paranoid.
If you don't know the difference, well please don't shoot me. Or anyone else for that matter, with whom you just might have a differing opinion or two. We do have a 1st Amendment too, afterall.
Guns yes, can make a person intimidating. But guns don't necessarily make a person Right. It's the logic of your ideas and facts, that does that -- not the piercing strength of your bullets in your many magazines.
There's solid line between vigilance and paranoia
by Claudia Smith Brinson, deseretnews.com -- Oct 28, 2001
[...]
As the joke goes, "I'm not paranoid; I know they're out to get me."
So, in the interest of physical and mental health, what's the difference between being vigilant and being paranoid? Is it vigilant to buy a gas mask? Or wacky?
Vigilance is rational; facts are attached. A fear is rational if it concerns something that is harmful and actually could happen, says Shane Thye, a sociologist at the University of South Carolina.
Paranoia is irrational. Paranoia is a fixed belief in something that is patently untrue, not real, not a threat, says Stephen McLeod-Bryant, a psychiatrist and medical director for the South Carolina Department of Mental Health. You insist on this fixed idea despite evidence to the contrary.
Here's the evidence to the contrary on gas masks: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there's no point in buying one. First, to work, a gas mask has to fit you. Second, to work, the gas mask has to be worn all the time. By the time you found out an attack was under way, it would be too late. Third, if it's breathing anthrax spores that's worrying you, look at the delivery system. [...]
Facts, they're stubborn things ... kind of hard to pin down sometimes ...
Facts, they're stubborn things, kind of hard to pin down sometimes -- kind of like the echo-chamber talking points, concocted in Rightwing Media and by the corporately funded lobbying groups ... those dark-money interests, who are only looking out for you -- and your wallet!
Fine line between vigilance and paranoia
by Susan Delacourt, Toronto Star -- Dec 15, 2012
A few weeks after the dust had settled from the U.S. presidential election, a pollster went out and asked Americans about the forces shaping politics in their country.
A full 49 per cent of Republicans believed the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) had helped President Barack Obama “steal” his election victory.
... and
some Facts are not so stubborn ...
-- despite the pesky fact that ACORN folded in 2010. How ... wait ... huh?
There is fine line between vigilance and paranoia -- one is based on facts in evidence; and one is based on wild rumors and speculation.
If you don't know the difference, well please quit treading on -- those of us who do.
Just remember, there is a reason WHY the 1st Amendment -- is first.
So that logic and reason, would prevail over brawn and constant fear. One day. In the land of free ... and the home of the brave ... debates.