Thoughts to Build On

To threaten another, is to set a time-bomb
inside yourself, using a clock without hands or markings,
and so never know when it will explode and destroy you.
Yet this kind of dangerous brinkmanship has
become a reckless way of attempting intimidation. Almost
every day's newspapers, television and radio news pro-
grams carry speeches which somewhere contain threats,
direct or implied, against individuals, groups, races, classes,
laws, governments, institutions, authorities-or whatever is
the current threat-target of the activists, militants, disrupt-
ers, rioters, revolutionaries or anarchists in our midst.
These threats are made with foolhardy aban-
don which indicates a lack of knowledge of the danger
to the one who, himself, is making the threat! Incredible
as it seems, people think they can threaten others with
impunity. They cannot!
The danger to the person making a threat is
that a threat instills the fear of loss to someone or to many.
It is a basic fact that while most people will work for gain,
they will fight to avoid loss. Some may not choose to fight
openly; some may not be able to fight immediately; but
every person who is threatened by loss will re-act in some
hostile manner and sooner or later will retaliate against the
person (group, race, etc.) who threatened him.
The people who get their exhilaration of power
through real or implied threats for the purpose of instilling
fear in others, are placing themselves in grave danger. It is
they who should be afraid, because as Seneca wrote in the
days of the great Roman Empire, "He must necessarily fear