Daily Inspiration Quote by Elmer Davis

Fear is the oldest tool in the political kit, and Elmer Davis treats it like a cheap trick you refuse to clap for. Calling it the "first and great commandment" borrows the cadence of scripture, then flips it into secular survival advice: before ideology, before policy, before even patriotism, your primary duty is to keep your nerve. The line works because it sounds absolute while aiming at something practical. Not bravery as a personality trait, but composure as civic hygiene.

Davis wrote in a century when mass persuasion got industrialized - total war, propaganda offices, radio voices that could reach into your living room. As a journalist and wartime broadcaster, he understood how quickly fear collapses judgment and how easily "emergency" becomes a permanent form of governance. The "them" is intentionally vague, a grammatical shrug that does real work: it implicates not just obvious villains but any institution that benefits from a frightened public, including ones that claim to be protecting you.

The subtext is almost accusatory. If you are scared, someone is steering you; if you can be panicked on cue, you can be managed on cue. Davis isn't romanticizing stoicism. He's warning that fear changes what you will tolerate: censorship feels comforting, scapegoats feel necessary, and cruelty gets rebranded as realism. The commandment is a line of defense for democracy, but also for private sanity. Stay unscared long enough to think, and you take the microphone away from the people counting on your trembling.