PACKET EDITORIAL, Sept. 28
By: Packet Editorial
"The only thing we have to fear," President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told the nation as he assumed the presidency on March 4, 1933, "is fear itself."
We could use some of FDR’s wisdom today.
In the wake of the events of Sept. 11, many Americans are frightened, not only for their country but for themselves. Glued to our television sets, watching international tensions rise and the stock market fall, we are not unlike an earlier generation who huddled around the radio to hear a steady stream of alarming news about the gathering storm clouds of war in Europe and the ravages of the Great Depression at home.
But as much as President Bush tries to rally us, FDR-like, to have faith in our economy, as much as Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan appeals to us to keep our dollars in stocks and bonds rather than hiding them under our pillows, as much as Mayor Rudy Giuliani pleads with us to come back to New York and spend our money in theaters and restaurants, we just aren’t buying it.
America is in panic mode and we need to get out of it. Fast.
Some of our fears may not go away quickly. A lot of people are terrified of getting on an airplane right now. (Many people, after all, can barely get over their fear of flying even in the calmest of times.) Statistically, flying may still be the safest way to travel, but emotionally, the thought of getting on a plane after seeing what happened at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon a little more than two weeks ago has to give pause to even the most seasoned jet-setter.
Besides, the airlines have been laying people off left and right since the disasters in New York and Washington leaving even fewer personnel to conduct the security checks that were already cursory at best before this terrorist plot unfolded. Stories from travelers who have flown since the nation’s airports re-opened early last week suggest that little has been done to make the skies safer, unless one believes that replacing hot meals with box lunches to keep passengers from getting their hands on lethal silverware represents a major step forward in security.
If our trepidation about air travel is easy to understand, many of our other fears are not. We were taken aback, for example, when we learned that the West Windsor-Plainsboro Board of Education was considering canceling next spring’s trips to Walt Disney World by the senior classes of the district’s two high schools. To their credit, the board members ultimately decided to behave like adults and set a good example for their children by allowing the trips to go on.
Other adults, however, are behaving worse than children. We’ve heard motorists express fear about driving on interstate highways because a tractor-trailer carrying hazardous materials in the next lane might be driven by a terrorist. We’ve been told by football fans that they’ll stay away from this weekend’s games at Princeton and Rutgers because they’re afraid security won’t be tight enough to keep bombs out of the stadiums. We’ve watched with incredulity as TV cameras show supermarkets sold out of bottled water (which is not regulated or tested) because consumers are afraid that water from their local reservoirs (which is regulated and tested) will be contaminated by biological agents.
And we’ve been dumbstruck by news that gas masks, both the Israeli and U.S. Marine Corps variety, have been sold out everywhere not because they are needed by rescue workers in New York and Washington but because they are in demand by citizens convinced they will need them to survive a germ-warfare attack on the United States.
Living in a country whose mainland has never before been attacked, Americans may want to draw inspiration in these dark days from the conduct of others who have persevered through troubled times. We might look to the courage shown by Londoners, who went on with their lives 60 years ago under the relentless attack of the Blitz, or the mettle of Israelis and Palestinians, who go on with their lives today despite constant terrorist threats and acts. Or we might just listen to our president, and other leaders, whose calm, reassuring confidence about our personal and collective security, both physical and financial, should set an example for all of us.

