Democracy and the Philosophy of Will Therapy

A powerful enemy of our American way of living has arisen across the ocean. This enemy has been openly attacking the democratic pattern of national government. That threat has raised open opposition in this country and given rise to many efforts to re-define the privileges and responsibilities of living in a democracy. Though this country is not physically attacked by the Nazis, our reaction has been almost as great as if that were so. That is we feel definitely menaced by the Nazi ideology and by “totalitarian” ideologies in general.

As is usual with the spread of fear of something which threatens our total (physical and spiritual) existence, we become sensitized to fear and in many instances any social ideology which differs from the one we happen to operate with, likewise becomes a menace. This identification of a circumscribed ideology with a broad one is often based only on the fact that, basically, ideological difference is always threatening to some degree, because it disturbs our sense of oneness with our surroundings; once this sense of oneness is disturbed, toleration for differences of any kind decreases rapidly. A few commonplace instances of the operation of this may help. A small child threatened in his individual expression by seeing a psychiatrist, will dub a rubber soldier Hitler and crush him in a vise, though one knows that in this instance that the threat of the relationship with the therapist is really greater than that of Hitler. Adults too are caught in this; and were it not for the practical emergency we are in, it would be ludicrous to see Mrs. Jones label Mrs. Doe a “red” because she wears lisle hose. People, who yesterday were in simple disagreement with their neighbors, may now find themselves stung with the epithet “Fascist”. The real emergency we have makes it possible to hang those hateful names dealing with the Fascist ideology on almost anything we differ with.

Not so long ago we were ridiculing the people who changed the name of hambu