In the hours and days after a near-miss assassination attempt on Donald Trump -- and his defiant reaction in real time -- we have discussed the quality of courage in multiple contexts. Trump's first social-media statement exhorted his followers and all Americans to "FEAR NOT," but to trust in their own ability to defy their enemies and to rally together for our common values. 

At the time, I wrote that this presents a real test for us, individually and as a nation, to choose whether to retreat, blindly retaliate, or stand defiant with wisdom and courage:

In the face of wickedness and evil in any context, do we hug the ground and find a corner into which to crawl and protect ourselves out of very rational and understandable fear? Do we panic and retaliate blindly and stupidly, out of anger and fear, another impulse that feeds wickedness and evil? Or if we are still able, do we choose to stand defiant, shake our fist into its face, and yell "Fight!" and demonstrate what character and faith looks like as an example to all?

Fortunately, my longtime friend Tammy Bruce had already written at length on this very critical issue. Her new book, Fear Itself: Exposing the Left's Mind-Killing Agenda, will get published next Tuesday, July 23rd. Normally, authors don't start doing interviews until publication day, but Tammy agreed to give us a preview and to discuss her work in the context of what happened on Saturday. 

I have embedded the video at the end, and have some highlights from an edited version of the transcript. Tammy explains the thesis well, but also its application -- and why she thinks America is finally ready to shut down the Fear Industrial Complex.

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TAMMY: I've got my book right here. Fear itself, exposing the left's mind killing agenda, which actually comes from the phrase mind killing comes from Herbert's Dune. Which of course the youngsters watching this know from the films, but our generation read those books. And it was really, of course, a great deal about withstanding the issuance of fear and control of society by a massive government and really embracing our own selves when it comes to the nature of individualism and power. ...

It is an ancient technique. It is deliberate, whether it be the riots of Black Lives Matter or the economy or COVID and what happened there, the ultimate example of this. And certainly the nature of what was being said and currently is what we're dealing with, the nature of how Donald Trump is portrayed, the argument that all of us are bad through global warming, our existence is bad through racism, it's systemic, it can never end.

ED: I was actually writing about this on on Saturday night. And again, on Sunday morning, of course. ... Most people would have stayed down and got off the stage without standing back up again. And the Secret Service would probably prepare for him to do that. And there wouldn't have been anything wrong with that, right? Totally understandable, even smart. [But] Donald Trump stands back up, shakes his fist at whoever it was that was shooting, I don't think he understood that they had already killed the guy at that point. I don't know that his bodyguards understood that either, and said, fight, fight, fight. You get that iconic photograph from Evan Vucci from the New York Times, and a couple other people had very similar photographs. And to me, this was the real lesson here. He had every reason to fear. This is to me like an FDR moment. ...

And that's the choice that's before us. And I think that's the choice. And you just were talking about that. That's the choice that this book is telling us that we have to make. Exactly. You don't think that fear is a weakness. Fear is a rational reaction.

TAMMY: Gavin DeBecker, who's the famous security expert right after the OJ Simpson killings, had a book called The Gift of Fear. And it is a gift, but it's meant to be transitory. It's not meant to be chronic. It's been weaponized. And it's a message about choices you have to make using logic and reason If you get stuck into the emotional reaction to fear, you're lost, but it can be reversed.

ED: [In Malcolm X's famous speech] 60 years ago, he was talking about the same thing. Now, again, I don't necessarily agree with where he was going with that, but he was warning people about the use of what you would call the fear industrial complex, I guess, in this book, right? Which is to instill fear into a population so that you can make them malleable and force them to be compliant, if not downright submissive. And that's what you're getting at with this book, The Fear Industrial Complex. And I think we see this in the censorship regime. I'm not sure how far you're gonna get into this in the book, but the whole censorship regime that came up because of the pandemic, people weren't allowed to question constantly changing guidelines on how to react, what you're supposed to do. Masking doesn't work. Suddenly masking is the bomb, various different things, the six foot rule. And if you question that, you got your social media accounts suspended or canceled.

TAMMY: Yeah, part of it, it's these many different layers, right? It's one thing, it's the rhetoric that demonizes people, but it's about censorship that also sends a signal that other people can't be trusted and you can't be trusted. It's the economy. Where you're never sure what the next day will bring, if you can pay your rent, if you can get gas into your car. That elicits a degree of fear, to say the least. ... 

So effectively, they want you high and they want you drugged. They want you poor and they want you afraid. But all of that is so unnatural that it has to be reinforced all the time. 

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That should give everyone a taste of the conversation, while neatly avoiding my brain fade at the beginning of the interview. (Seriously ... ) It's a great conversation about the Fear Industrial Complex and its very predictable aim to panic people into authoritarianism. 

Again, now is the time to pre-order Tammy Bruce's Fear Itself: Exposing the Left's Mind-Killing Agenda. Keep checking Tammy's website to get more information on her book tour, too. Tammy will come back to continue the conversation soon.