The Cost of Getting Over Your Fear & Becoming Dangerous, by Steve Brown: "When you get right down to it, most people are not as interested in freedom as they are in security. Given the clear option between freedom (with its attendant responsibility and problems) and dictatorship (with its attendant structure and limits), most people pick dictatorship every time. Why? Because we want to be secure and safe, not free and responsible.

"The point is this: Freedom sounds good until you get right down to what it costs and, when that happens, most people will opt for something less than freedom."

"Christian boldness presupposes that you will sometimes fail because you are required to risk. The easiest way I know to avoid failure is never to risk. In my pagan days I played a lot of poker. As a matter of fact, you can learn a lot about life and people from playing poker. When you play poker and you are never willing to risk, you must face the prospect that you will never win."

"You will be safe, but you will never know the excitement and the great rewards of risk."

A Stronger Kerry Forces Bush to Make a Compelling Case: "But more likely the president will win a second term only if he can reverse the demand for change by restoring faith in his own leadership and direction."

"For months, his campaign has mostly stressed the risks of change." As if not changing now means we wouldn't then change anyway in four years?

There is a strong correlation between security and violence. Why? Because security is based on limitations of freedom. But as men are born to be free (despite aforementioned fears thereof), man is determined to be free. The stronger the limitations and control on one's freedom, the more violent is one's liberation from those restraints.

The president in seeking a second term would do well to abandon his current risk-averse strategy. Where is the president who campaigned on responsibility at home? (before, after) Where is the president who championed freedom in Iraq? Why the perpetual state of fear from a president who heralded his former opponent as having nothing to offer but fear itself?

US terror alert: Are you worried?