The Alien War Against Personal Liberty
Accounts of alien abductions originated in the United States, and continue to come from there more frequently than from any other part of the world. In this, Barney and Betty Hill set a course for the future just as surely as they annihilated assumptions from the past. Because America is built partially on a self-created notion of God-given independence, freedom—an idea with numberless American definitions—looms large in the national psyche. Because we have nothing like war-shattered London, Berlin, or Tokyo in our recent past, we have no experience with the humbleness brought by an enemy’s ceaseless campaign of destruction, and loss of personal freedom. (The heinous, isolated 2001 attack on the World Trade Center towers, executed by a dangerous group rather than an identifiable enemy nation, is another issue.) Abduction means captivity and a revocation of freedom.
Whether perpetrated by extraterrestrials, professional kidnappers, or the pervert on the next block, it is an idea that encourages Americans to recoil. Alien abduction, then, has as strong a hold on our sense of self as on our physical bodies. Little wonder that Americans have reported this repugnant idea more faithfully than people living outside the USA. Still, study by psychiatrists, sociologists, behaviorists, and other professionals suggests a commonality among accounts related by abductees, no matter the victims’ nationalities. John E. Mack, an academic who examined the spiritual aftereffects of alien abductions among victims he interviewed said, “I take them [abduction tales] seriously. I don’t have a way to account for them.”