I realize that fear is necessary. Fear protects us. Without fear there would be no courage. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (though I’ve been reading some neat stuff about how God takes us from fear to peace and love and relationship…anyway…). Fear plays a part in life, that’s just how it is. And so fear is a major motivator in our lives. Why is everyone so green right now? Well besides the fact that it’s become the cool thing to do, Al Gore scared us into it (and if he’s right it’s for good reason). Fear was/is the primary motivator in being green. And that’s ok, it’s valuable.

But here’s my question or observation. At what point does the use of fear become the beginning of terrorism? Or at least terrorism at it’s fledgling state. Here’s the dictionary’s definition of terrorism:
1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

And here’s the video that spawned my thoughts about this:

Doesn’t it seem as though this add crosses some of those boundaries? Is Rudy attempting to use fear to intimidate or coerce for political purposes? While I realize that some would suggest that our current president does this same thing, I’ve really got nothing to say about that because I didn’t just happen to watch a Bush video that depicts him as a terrorist. I don’t know much about politics and I’m not nearly as well versed as I should, but Rudy’s video seemed ridiculous to me. What do you think?