I’m afraid of the dark.

Bill Keller

Editor, Conservative Outlook

I am afraid of the dark. I honestly can not remember a time in my life when I have not been somewhere between “terrified” and “nervous” when caught in darkness.

As a child, there were night lights, a room next to my mom, flashlights to go outside with and general avoidance of roaming beyond where light was plentiful.

That said, I still ventured out in the dark. I found ways to suck up my fear, set it aside and get on with things.  Age tempered my fears, but never to the point where I felt any level of real peace with darkness. And, this continues today as well.

My most fearful time was that spent in Vietnam.  Pulling guard duty on the perimeter, hunkered down in a fighting hole on patrol or traveling on the road at night (a very rare occurrence), fear could be palpable.  You could taste it, smell it and feel it. And, yet, you could not allow it to interfere with your job because the price of shoddiness could be the life of your friend.

Those days are over 30 years in the past.  Yet, walking in the woods still raises the hair on the back of my neck. And still, I walk in the woods and set my fear aside. A few weeks ago I was on a campout with our scout troop (http://troop47.com). Before crawling under my tarp for the night, I made the pilgrimage to the outhouse for a final pit stop. One of the younger scouts asked to go along as some called after him “Are you afraid of the dark?” “No!” the scout answered grumpily, but – he was. We chatted a bit and I told him I knew how he felt but that if he only moved his feet, all would be well.

Last March, as I was returning home from a Scout meeting about 9PM in the evening, something flashed across the road coming from behind our house.  In stunned disbelief I realized it was a mountain lion. Honestly, my walks outside our home at night have taken on an extra edge since that night.  And, yet, I walk out of the house at night.

There have always been dangers associated with darkness, both real and imagined. It is how an individual deals with these dangers that either allows a person to move forward or become incapacitated and ineffective.  The choice is dependent on the individual and the final result always a reflection of that individual’s fears and strengths.

As a nation, we are standing in “darkness”.  It is represented by the direct threat to our nation by the enemies of civilization.  I have loosely bundled them into a group that I have defined as Islamofacists. They are determined, aggressive and lethal with the intent of destroying as much of the civilized world as possible.

They are continually trying to leverage their total disregard for the natural laws of civilization into an edge that allows them to attack anytime, anywhere, with any and all weapons available to them, including nuclear, chemical or biological agents.

The danger is real.  The dead of 9/11 and those of the preceding 30 years represent an evolution of this threat. It is a threat that will, eventually, once again manifest itself within our borders. One has only to look at Israel and their struggle with terrorists to glimpse our future.  The real question for America, prior to our election on November 2^nd, is how we, as a nation, will handle this “fear of the dark”.

I believe this undercurrent of fear is a major element in the stark divide between our two major parties this year.  Both sides fear attack.  Both sides fear death.  Both sides know in their heart of hearts that there will be more attacks within our borders.  Both sides know that every effort is being made to make sure that rather than 3,000 dead there will be 30,000 or 300,000 or 3,000,000.  The weaponry exists and is available and the fear is that it is inevitable.

The strongly divided camps between Kerry and Bush are directly related to how each group responds to “the dark”.

The Kerry group responds primarily by denying that the dark exists.  “Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time!” The terrorists do not exist. If we stop interfering with their lives, they will leave us alone. If we only try to understand them, they will stop killing us.

The Bush group responds by acknowledging the dark, setting aside their fears and pursuing our attackers with every resource available to us. If we pursue them aggressively, if we incarcerate and kill these animals, it may not take us entirely out of the darkness, but it will provide us the best possible chance of reducing casualties long-term and offer the hope of peace in the future.

The vote being cast on November 2^nd is simply that, a choice between succumbing to darkness or refusing to allow darkness to overpower us.

It is a stark choice.