> Somehow a drive for perfect safety has become a fairly important part of
> culture -- e.g., the insistence currently that no risk from terrorism is
> acceptable. The War on Crime may have been the first move in developing
> this obsession. Someone ought (if it hasn't bee done) do a study in
> depth of its sources and development. I believe there has been science
> fiction re worlds in which evryone crouches in their own nest. And isn't
> the libertarian terror of government a related obsession?
>
> Carrol
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The control freaks are being driven by the invisible hand.
Anxieties have been thoroughly commodified in the US; I'm guessing it has some deep connectivity to the pessimism/optimism issue with the xtian religion as an emotional filter on large numbers of people living there.