Elsewhere on the interweb, the question was asked, "What are you afraid of?" The responses seemed to mostly be about creepy-crawly things and only touched on what, to me, were real fears. I quickly penned the following off the top of my head:

I am afraid of my children being harmed by developing a health problem which I cannot do anything about or by some type of accident when I am not around to protect them.

I am afraid of not being as good a husband and father as I could be.

I am afraid of people whose lives are governed by their desires and passions rather than by logic and reason.

I am afraid of liberals and their desire to help people in the short run at the expense of doing great harm in the long run (nearly every government program ever created).

I am afraid of Supreme Court justices who decide cases by their feelings and what they personally believe is right rather than by the Constitution and what the Founding Fathers believed was right.

I am afraid of people who are ignorant and government schools whose very existence depends on perpetuating that ignorance.

I am afraid of radical fascist beliefs spread by the sword overwhelming a world corrupted by pacifists and appeasers. So many on both sides are willing to die for their beliefs but unfortunately it appears that it is those who have no qualms about killing for their beliefs who will ultimately prevail. There is a scourge on this planet and over the centuries and last few decades it has shown itself to only be growing.

I am afraid that liberal government's insatiable quest for money will one day turn to the largest pool of wealth in the world, private retirement accounts of hard working Americans.

I am afraid that it may already be too late for the United States to survive given our national debt of more than 9.6 trillion, otherwise known as $9,600,000,000,000.00, which is more than $31,000.00 for every man, woman and child, more than 124,000.000 for just my family alone. If that doesn't convince you we are economically doomed, then what about the fact that our federal government is additionally on the hook for $57.3 trillion in federal "entitlements" for Medicare, Social Security and other government programs. That's over $500,000 per household and doesn't even include state and local governments!

I am afraid when you combine the above two fears that the only solution is massive inflation so that the accumulated debt can be paid off with worthless dollars, all of which would render my hard earned saving stuffed away every month at great cost and sacrifice...worthless.

Shortly thereafter an individual deployed in Iraq posted the following:

Currently here I am afraid of IEDs, Insurgents, and the biggest fear Amry/AF Iraqis that decide to switch to the bad guys side.

To which I replied:

I'm going to put aside my list of fears for a while and just pray about yours.

Sometimes you just have to put things in perspective.