Find. I looked at do we get this in times of political hardship or voices with people in the media planting fears or is it grassroots conflict and economic conflicts that bubble up and become widespread panic. At the outset, i was looking to see if there was a clear difference between alarm and panic. Not all political alarm is panic. What was in my head was after 911 we had good reasons to be concerned about security. When a bomb was detonated my parents had concern because we were the only country with this powerful weapon. In 1834, when a convent was burned down that was panic. So how did we get to that point . As an example of the things that go on in the book i wanted to look at the burning of the convent. And one of the first things i didnt expect to was i bumped into at that event. National success contributed to it. Three National Successes contributed to it. The first was we won the revolution. And once that happened there was concern this freedom of religion we established in this country, not the first to do, but we established, created a fear of catholics. If enough catholics come in, the pope may end up running the country via controlling the votes of these catholics. Five of the first 13 states had in their state constitutions a stipulation that only a prodstant should be elected to state office. And indeed, catholics did start coming into the country and that is before the failure of the potato crop in ireland in the 1840s. Catholics starting coming in because of the turmoil in french and catholics from ireland started coming from the conflict there are england. The first success was in 1803 with the louisiana perchase. And in 1825 we complete the eerie of canal and that connects the land. This is where people are moving. And a lot of new comers are moving there along with others. And there is this fear we may loose this. All of this we gained, we may loose. We come to 1834. And here is a case of indeed an influential voice in flaming fears. There is a man who was a minister in boston, prominent and father of heriot beacher stow. And his sermon said the catholic system is adverse to liberty. That was the point of the sermon. He said under their priesthood they might be induced to act as one. The use of absolute and the absolute here is that all catholics think and act alike. Then he goes on and calls what i call a blank to be filled in. As a reoccurring element, he says how many presses might they influence by their promised patronage and how many might reach tender . He doesnt tell us how many. That is for us to fill in. And there is no way to do that with not having our personal needs fill that in. And then he harkins National Success saying it is the light of the republican prosperity that is sending earthquake under the foundation of their thrown, meaning the pope, i guess, and they have no hope of rest except the extinction of their light. He brings up something that is the only element of this hole topic that is particularly american. I believe this kind of panic is a human behavior. I dont think it is a conservative behavior, a liberal behavior, american behavior. It as a human behavior. And there is one piece that is american and has elements in other countries and cultures. He writes if this nation is in the providence of god, destined to lead the moral of world. There is a scholar, very canadian and he wrote a book entitled the puritan origins of the american self. And in this book he argues that when the puritans founded the Massachusetts Bay colony they came with a mission. And it was an end root by john in a sermon and he said in this land we are going to create a new jerusalem, a city on the hill, going from the new testament with that phrase, and it will be a beacon of the world of a pure christianity and through this beacon we will bring that light to the world. What he argued was by the time the revolution took place they replaced christianity with liberty and freedom. Through that we would bring the light of the one true weight of the world. When i read that some years ago, my first thought was that is a really good point. My second thought, and in many ways the more important, was this little voice inside the middle of my brain that said we are the one true way. I could not shake that. To this day, i cannot shake that. I mention that because for me, i dont think i am alone, but that is how potent that perception of myself as an american is. And beacher, when he made this statement in the sermon, went on to say, if in the providence of god we are destined to lead the way in the moral part of the world, it is high time she understood or calling and was harnesed to the work. The work is a blank to be filled in. What constitutes the work. Within two days of this sermon a mob burned down the convent in summerville, massachusetts. These voices are not old ones. Lets compare him to the pres t present. Beacher started by saying the catholic system is adversed to liber liberty. Newt gingrich said he believes shareal law is a concern for the country. And in fact both of them are doing yet another element that occurs alot and that is the filtered fact. Newt gingrich is a highly educated man and i dont think for a man he is stupid and i think he was probably aware he was filtering this fact which by the way is another piece here. Sometimes people are panicked and sometimes people are availing themselves with panic. There is no way to know which is which because you will have to climb inside their head and we cannot do that. I suspected Newt Gingrich new he was filtering the fact. The supremeracy clause says the units laws are supreme and no judge can rule and give privile privile privilege to a foreign law. So shareal law cant happen unless we elect it. Which is why he said stealth jihadist use tools and completed the sentence. But what is a stealth jihadist . We dont know. They are stealth. My wife sent my and my two sons a column on obamas over restraint in not wanting to put boots on the ground in various confli conflicts. It was great. But maybe he is a stealth jihadi. We dont know. Think of the concerns shared by varying degrees by people of the nsa. What are they up to . We are filling in the blanks and our fears and needs are par advertise patting in the way we fill it in. Not all panic emanate from voices or political leaders fanning the roots of people. I want to talk about a panic that existed for a long time in this country about chinese. You can almost date it from the discovery of gold in california to december 7th 1941 when chinese and japanese it started with the discovery of gold and it wasnt just americans rushing out to get the gold. People were coming from all over the world. So the First Chinese coming into the country were men who were gold miners and setup camps mostly in california. And often times there would be conflict if a group of americans thought the chinese were on to something and they would wipe them out or push them out and do whatever they could. And they would weproceed this b passing a revolution. This appeared in a San Francisco bullet in 1857. I want to read part of the resolution and i will raise this hand whenever there is an absolute in the resolution. Whe whereas the requirements to preserve the freeman and hand them untarnished demand acs on the question of aggression in the mines filtered fact there is no record that exist today, to my knowledge, of the aggression in the mines. There is a lot of record of american aggression of chinese in the mine. And therefore we have the responsibility of expelling these intolerable nuisances. What started to grow in addition was another element that sometimes will happen in political panics which is sometimes separate panics will merge and then things get potent. In this case, much like the way this industry and country will outsource work to china because they get cheap labor, back in the 1850s, corporations and mainly railroads imported the work. So, then the panic starts to really grow and you start seeing in places like San Francisco, big mas meetings where fear of chinese is also getting wedded to fear of capitalist which has been a long time panic in this country as well. And from among that comes a number of leaders but the number one is dennis tyranny who came out the teamster union. He would give speeches in San Francisco filled with the same kind of panic inducing rhetoric i have been sighting and at the end of the speeches, groups and mobs would break out and head over to china town, beat the di dickens out of chinese who get caught on the street, smash and burn their homes. Then the politicians came on board. It happened in the nation capital when in 1892 the chinese pact was signed. The federal government is now participating in panic. Not the first time but the first time in that panic they participated in it. There is one other piece in that resolution that maybe slipped by. I want to go back and repeat the phrase. It is the most frequently occurring absolute in american panic. It is the part where they made reference to preserve the rights of free men. They are referencing the declaration of independence. The Founding Fathers is the most absolute to me. It cuts across town and all across the political spectrum. Far right, far left and everything in between. The absolute is the implication that the Founding Fathers shares a vision. Well they did. They all agreed we should not be part of england. After that it is hard to know if they agreeed on anything. I think they would have had trouble dividing a lunch check. And yet, it is used so often as i am sure you know i want to give two quick examples from a works from the 19th and early 20th century from both ends of the political spectrum and a book that appeared in 1906 danger socialism or empire. And this book was stirring up fears of radical movements that were brewing back then and one sentence from the book says, it is one of the founding father references, our constitution was framed with the objective of allowing absolute freedom in business conduct. So in addition to the founder father reference, we have an absolute. It uses the word absolute. Absolute freedom. And we have a filtered fact and the fact it is filtering is only once does the constitution of the United States refer to business conduct. Article one section eight congress has the authority to regulate interstate commerce. From this end of the political spectrum, a book from 1895, written by man named mw howard who was a member of conference, today his title would reference wall street. He wrote the millionaire is a product of modern civilization. He was unknown for our forefathers and he could not have flushed in the same atmosphere that gave birth to the declaration of independence. At the time of the revolution no one had a Million Dollars or more because the currency was in pounds and shillings. But there were very rich people. Some were Founding Fathers and some not. A very, very rich man named hine salamon lent huge amounts to congress so they could prosecute the war. He flurished in the atmosphere that gave birth to the declaration of independence. At what point does concern or alarm become panic . I talked about the 1949 soviet union deadinated a bomb and by 1950 a book called red channels. Somewhere between 19491950 we crossed the threshold from that is where concern is to that is panic. Red channels was a book and it contained 151 names of people in mass media in television and entertainment and radio and tv film and Creative Arts that would be there who were claimed to be communist or communist sympathizers. So it included names and i should say these people had their careers destroyed because they could not appear in the media or damaged because they could do what they did but couldnt do it in those medias so they had to stay on the stage or places like that where it wasnt affected by the book. Leonard burnstein, aaron copeland, dashal hammond, lillian hellmont. Howard k smith is my favorite. He used to do the news when i was in college and high school and that is how i came to know smith. This is panic. But why . It is panic because logic has been trampled by psycho logic. Here is the ill logic of this book. This book is called guilt by association. And that logic goes back to something that in classical greece scholars did this for fun. All cats have ears, socretese has ears so therefore he is a cat. Back in the 1870s, well this is red scare, it is when americans started learning there was such a thing as communism. And the Chicago Tribune published an article to educate the public on what this is about. And they did a good job summarizing the doctrine. Redistributing property and taking all protection under the state. Pretty fair. Two sentences later. It is the grand ignorance of the cincinnati mans working congress. What is that . I look it up. This was augustseptember in 1870. A group that met in cincinnati called the cincinnati work mans congress. It was a gathering of labor unions and union leaders. Today we might call it a Political Action committee. They were trying to pull resources to urge their rank and file to vote for representatives who supported labors interest and in that era their number one interest was an eight hour working day. So here is the speech communist advocate collective action and the cincinnati working man advocates collective action therefore the since working man is communist. It still goes on today. Here is a story from 2012. Mitchell bachman made a comment saying a group was connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and they said she, too, maybe working on the pact. There is no bright shiny line that says this is panic and this isnt panic. In the book, most of the time, i talk about portals to panic. I talk about panic inducing thoughts. We are all subject to those kind of thoughts. It doesnt mean we are all panicked. But the one thing i think we can say that is panicked and which someone says or does or advocates that which they fear. Two quick examples. When one fears as did the new york legislator back not too long ago, well back in the earlier part of the 20th century, that Puerto Ricans danger the nation and to back that they require them to pass a literacy test. They damaged the foundation of a pillar that all men are created equal because they rendered it all English Speaking men are created equal. It goes back far to do that which one fears. All the way back to the First Political panic among the country and that is the salem witch hunt. It was three young girls that were having fits and deemed to be posesed by the devil one of the women in the town had a witches cake prepared. It is a cake made with urine from one of the girls and you feed it to the dogs and then it would spit out the name of the witch that posesed here. To combat witch craft this woman engaged in witch craft. In the book over and over again, what i show is that these things that lead to the portals to panic, there are people that will advocatie or do what they are doing that they fear. One last element is statistics. And the reason it is last is because it is the element that demonstrates how the other elements connect. I am looking at my cause n who is a mathematician. It was it through its misuse. In 1896, there was an article published by a statistician. He correlated various ills and Life Expectancy with grace. And he found that africanamericans correlated highly as one might expect these and others. And he concluded reading from the article it isnt in the condition of life, but race and heredity we find the fact to be observed in all parts of the globe, and all times and among all people namely the superiority of one race over them all. This person was a statistician and in statistics 101 i was taught correlation doesnt imply causation. Let me give you an actually true statistics. 99 of all murders drank milk as children. But the milk didnt cause them to be murdered. In 1969, this is Research Done by author jenson. A california profest professor and a height of the raci raci racial riots. He correlated iq test with ethnicity and concluded that blacks had genetically lower iqs than whites. As soon as he published it there was a truck load of scholars saying whoa, that is bad science. It works off two dubious assumptions and a fallacy. Assumption one that intelligence is something that can be measured and two that the iq fact measures intelligence and the fallacy of this causing correlation. A report from the Heritage Foundation showed a report that used correlation causation didnt even use data. In the moment after i think you will see why they would do Something Like that. And particularly interesting in the Heritage Foundation report is their correlation causation argument without data was wedged within two blanks to be filled in. First let me give you the blanks to be filled in. They were talking about federal role and education and right before it they wrote the feminist agenda obtained a solid foothold in education. That is the kind of blank that needs to be filled in today. What is the feminist agenda . It is up to you to see what it is on there. What is the homosexual agenda . And after the correlation thing them together is certifieditudeitude sertitude texas we have a need for it but not all to the same degree. And the example i give of this is jealousy. Which isnt political. It is certitude and some people need more than others. Some people are more jealous. To get to why you would have to climb in the their head which is like cobwebs in dark corners. By that same analogy is it what is operating in this political realm. I asked why the political panic happened and what i didnt expect because by the time i got to the end was why do some panic when others dont. The things i talked about Like National hardship or people from above and grassroots from below. Social conditions need to exist for it to become ripe. Any one of them isnt also there. But what is there is some people are going to freak out and some are not. And i think it is this need for certitude and these panic inducing elements that feed certitude that brings them to that point. I dont pretend this book is going to be a Silver Bullet to end political panic if for no other reason we a are democracy and as long as we are that we will whip up fears to get elected into the office. My hop