Panic Is Worse Than Useless

By John Hood
Carolina Journal

RALEIGH – Don’t panic. That’s easy to say, but so difficult to do.

Difficult when thrust suddenly into a situation fraught with danger or despair, as so many on the Gulf Coast were earlier this week. Difficult when one’s own distant acts of compassion, sometimes verging on propitiation, seem pitifully inadequate when faced with a disaster so massive that it leaves one’s mind reeling. Difficult when others, believing rumors spreading like wildfire along the dry kindling that is the Internet, become panicky themselves, as we have seen here in North Carolina during the past couple of days of skyrocketing gas prices.