one might suppose that modern democratic states, with the lessons of history at hand, would seek to minimize fear or at least minimize its effect on deliberative decision-making in both foreign and domestic policy. But today the opposite is frequently true. Even democracies founded in the principles of liberty and the common good often take the path of more authoritarian states. They don’t work to minimize fear, but use it to exert control over the populace and serve the government’s principle aim: consolidating power.

2014-01-30:

Machiavelli notoriously argued that a good leader should induce fear in the populace in order to control the rabble. Hobbes in “The Leviathan” argued that fear effectively motivates the creation of a social contract in which citizens cede their freedoms to the sovereign.

ring a bell?

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