And you also knew that today's opponent might be the only person along to pull you out of a snowdrift tomorrow. So tolerance and trust were practical necessities. Living more or less safely in a world we understood, we found liberty an easy thing to keep. But elsewhere, as I say, the average American's sense of the world has likely been derived by staring at it through the one-way tunnel of information. What the media's taught my fellow citizens is that all the world is dangerous in some irrational, non-specific way.
Terrorists are everywhere.
Nature is in open rebellion. Making love can kill you. Your fellow humans are liars in suits, thugs, zealots, psychopaths, and, mostly, victims who look a lot like you. Television amplifies the world's mayhem and gives you no way to talk back. Just as right now it's giving you no way to argue with me.