A reader writes: How can I overcome my fear of flying? When I’m on an airplane, every little bit of turbulence makes me jump. It’s not so much that I’m afraid of terrorism as I am of the possibility of incompetent mechanics on the ground who maintain the aircraft, or cost-cutting CEOs of the airline who would send an older airplane with maintenance problems up into the sky rather than spend money on a newer one. I realize that without flying I will never get to go anywhere very interesting, so I’d like to hear your advice.

Dr. Hurd replies:

Everything has a price. A candy bar costs fifty cents. A car costs twenty or thirty thousand dollars. A house costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just as objects have financial costs, choices we make have emotional or psychological costs. Marriage, for example, means having less control over your independent living in exchange, hopefully, for the presence of a wonderful level of intimacy and compatibility in your life. 

Q: For those of us who don't understand the issue, can you explain why you believe that Iran is so dangerous and why we must prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon?

A: I'll give you not one reason, but many reasons.

Iran has been the # 1 government sponsor of terrorism since the government came to power, in 1979. This is not just my opinion, but the statement of all American administrations since that time. While it cannot be established that 9/11 was directly sponsored by the government of Iran, the government of Iran is clearly sympathetic to such terrorism, and would have loved to have been responsible for it.

No government can or ever will be able to create the kinds of technological and medical advances that Americans increasingly take for granted. Governments can only effectively fulfill the role of the jailers, the police officers and the upholders of private contracts. Force, not creativity and ingenuity, is the only arena in which government can excel. Unfortunately, in mixed welfare-market economies such as ours, governments have been given the power to seize, “manage” or redistribute the products of man’s efforts—but only after the products or technologies are discovered and mass-produced by willing, productive individuals.

Most “liberal” and “conservative” politicians understand this fact, which is why so few of them are ideologically committed to full-scale socialism. They realize that productive individuals must be left free enough to produce a sizable tax base so that the enterprise of government may continue at the involuntary expense of those who provide the wealth in the first place.