Deliberation over fear of warming is good – debating policy options criticizes worst forms of apocalyptic framing while preserving the best.

A fear appeal possessing each of these characteristics is not only relatively ethically unproblematic, but is a potentially valuable tool capable of enhancing [End Page 232] public deliberations about some issues. "Civic fear" as developed by Aristotle and explicated within this essay is an emotional disposition with the potential to help the body of deliberators (whether legislators or citizens) to enhance their collective perception of the events threatening the republic. It is the potential of "civic fear" to enhance collective perception of events that allows this emotional state to incline audiences toward deliberation. Once decision makers apprehend the potential dangers posed by events more clearly, they are in a much better position to begin formulating potential courses of action, and weighing which of these actions is likely to preserve the republic from danger. "Civic fear," in other words, is an emotional state that, at its best, opens up deliberative possibilities. This type of fear appeal is to be contrasted with the traditional "dichotomous" fear appeal that is depressingly common in contemporary political discourse, and remains a lightning rod for ongoing humanist suspicions of fear and fear appeals in politics. Such fear appeals, in fact, are often used as strategies to bypass deliberation and scare audiences into adopting a rhetor's preferred alternative (as in the case of the passage of the USA-PATRIOT Act).¶ While this essay falls short of endorsing standard "dichotomous" fear appeals, and even remains skeptical of many of the baser fear appeals populating U.S. political discourse, this is not to suggest that all "dichotomous" fear appeals are inherently irrational or manipulative. Walton's work has established the appropriateness and rationality of some of these traditional fear appeals, and provided some relatively clear rules from traditional argument theory and pragmadialectics in order to assist citizens and critics in their attempt to evaluate them.70 But the cognitive character of this emotion also allows the possibility that the fear appeal can be used in a specifically civic and deliberative mode, as a means to enable citizens and policy makers to better recognize the nature of the problems facing the political community, and to begin thinking about potential solutions. In some respects, appeals to "civic fear" are especially necessary now at a time when many leaders, policy makers, and citizens—due to self-interest, unwarranted confidence, or excessive fear—have turned a blind eye to the very real dangers posed by global warming, fossil fuel dependence, resource depletion, income polarization, increasing corporate control of politics, failing health care systems, record budget deficits, record trade deficits, and the long list of other problems that remain relatively unrecognized by a regime that seems focused solely on an object of fear that is already clearly recognized by all. Under such circumstances, one can only hope that legislators and citizens will possess the courage, as well as the foresight, to face these underappreciated objects of fear, and commence open and vigorous discussions about potential solutions. Perhaps the ongoing abuse of fear appeals by the powerful may eventually itself [End Page 233] become an object of "civic fear," and inspire academics, political leaders, and citizens to even more fundamental deliberations regarding the character of U.S. political discourse, and the fate of the United States itself.