Cowardice
These days the world seems to be full of cowards, people who are afraid of truth, terrified of freedom, and horrified that the world might be a complicated place where their ways are not universal.
Radical Muslims stand that the crossroads of a thousand or more years of civilization, yet they’re afraid of a world where people are allowed to say things they don’t agree with about their religion. Whether it’s Danish cartoonists or the UN affirming the right to free speech, they wrongly see free expression as the problem. If Allah is truly great, then He is so great that He has no need for mortal men to punish his critics.
Scientologists are so horrified by the idea that people might have the right to criticize their religion that they will attack critics, especially their own former members, by any means necessary. Their cowardice runs so deep that they refuse to actually address any criticisms, and instead launch all-out attacks on the critics. Criticize a branch of Christianity, and the Christian will try to persuade you that it is actually a force for good. Criticize Scientology, and a Scientologist will loudly proclaim that you’ve no right to say such things, and possibly accuse you of being a child molester.
Some Christians are so afraid of the possibility that their own beliefs might not be true that they cannot accept atheism as a legitimate viewpoint held by sane, moral people. For a few this kind of fear is so profound that they will go to any lengths of dishonesty and self-delusion to proclaim that their ancient holy book is literally true, something it was never meant to be even when it was first penned all those millennia ago.
Some conservatives are so afraid for their livelihoods, so fearful of an unknown future, that they will cling to anything that sounds reassuring. (Which isn’t to say liberals aren’t guilty of this at times, but these days conservatives have gone off the deep end with it.) With political winds blowing in the other direction, they’ve become quick to decry imagined communism, issue racist comments about our first (somewhat) black president, and generally weep for the demise of an imagined ideal past.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio is apparently so afraid of being criticized or punished for what he does that he and his minions frivolously harass and persecute his critics and even judges who don’t fall into line.
Andy Kaufman is so afraid of a future where books aren’t consumed in the way that they are now that he readily wields the holocaust as a cudgel to proclaim his mistrust of technological change. Rather than helping make the future less dystopian, he flees from it, shouting about Hitler and accusing anyone who disagrees with his tasteless analogy of practicing a form of holocaust denial.
The world is full of cowards, people who are ill-equipped to live in a complicated world where they and their beliefs can be criticized, and where things don’t always work out how they’d like. Look for your own cowardice, eliminate it, and replace it with the courage and honesty to reexamine your beliefs and flaws and become better for it.