Be afraid. Be very afraid. That is the message as conservatives regroup in a new era.

The left gave us political correctness. The right gives us political fearfulness.

I'm afraid my problem is that I am not afraid enough. While various right-wing politicians and commentators have urged fear on we the inclined-to-be fearful people, I just can't bring myself to sign up for the national anxiety program.

I know I should be knocking my knees together at the thought that President Barack Obama might close the national embarrassment known as Guantanamo Bay detention center and bring terrorists to these shores. My knees, however, refuse to knock to a terrified beat.

Certainly, it would be a terrible thing if terrorists came here and interfered with our American way of life -- say, if they were to occupy the most comfy armchairs in Starbucks while reading the Jihadist Digest and drooping their beards into their nonfat lattes.

But, actually, they would be in federal prison where bars are more common than baristas. They would be keeping company with vile murderers and rapists and even other terrorists who have long inhabited such locales without a nervous thought by anyone on the outside.

Why is anyone worried about this now? Do we collectively think federal prison guards are incompetent wimps who can't handle 240 new knuckleheads? This is not a huge number. If you put 240 bad guys into a school assembly hall with an old-fashioned nun in charge, my money would be on the nun.

Even the Democrats, as ever profiles in courage, have bought into the contagion of fear, denying Mr. Obama money to proceed. Apparently the politically correct thing is now the politically fearful thing. This is progress, I suppose.

The problem is that, at the urging of certain politicians and their propagandists, the Islamist crazies have been elevated to the status of super-boogeymen. That flatters them way too much. As far as I am concerned, they are nothing more than vicious criminals, no smarter than the average dope doing time.

The federal prisons holding such characters would be no more targets than they are now -- which is to say, hardly at all (except in the lurid plots of B movies). You go the Big House, you stay in the Big House, that's how it works, whether you say it in Arabic or English.

In The New York Times on Saturday, a resident of Canon City, Colo,, where prisons are a historic presence, expressed concern that the families of detainees would move into town.

Granted, that would be a problem for the ladies operating the Welcome Wagon. But let's face it, the terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay aren't going to be visited by their moms in Prisonville, USA. And if their moms were to sit down in the local Dairy Queen, how terrified should Americans be?

How embarrassing and ridiculous the cult of the scaredy-cat has become in this nation. Here's a country that housed Nazi and Japanese POWs in World War II and yet a couple of generations later we are too afraid to lock up a few Islamic terrorists! Greatest Generation, meet the Knocked-Kneed Generation.

When did America stop being the home of the brave? Was it when people started duct-taping their houses in response to an absurd alarm after 9/11? Did they then shut out common sense?

I ask a lot of questions for one who is not worried. What's worse, at least from the perspective of those whose political anxieties make their bladders overly agitated, I am not worried about a lot of things:

• I am not worried about President Obama being a dangerous radical. The ACLU is mad at him for not releasing photos of torture, he hasn't nationalized the banks and he won't prosecute Bush staffers, to name but a few non-socialist things he has done. Radical? Nope, not worried about that.

• I am not worried about the economy all that much, either. America is a huge engine of commerce. It's coughing and spitting now, but its economic pistons can't be stopped by any administration. The fuel is the entrepreneurial spirit of the people. Because there's no shortage of that, I am not really worried.

• I am certainly not worried about Judge Sonia Sotomayor becoming a Supreme Court justice. When women won the right to vote long ago, conservatives were worried that a shocking day of female empathy and experience would come. Me, I am not worried.

I refuse to be worried. All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well -- which is another thing to worry about, if you are a purveyor of fear. After all, no political advantage can be wrung from calm optimism and steady hands.