"Perpetual state of fear"

"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”
-- General Douglas MacArthur, A Soldier Speaks (1965)

An interesting quotation. It sounds like something Ron Paul might have said on the campaign trail as he railed against the fearmongering of Rudy Giuliani, other candidates, or the current president. But the quote comes - surprisingly - from General MacArthur. I don't know the context; the book source is a postmortem collection of previous writings, so the date and context for the quotation is still unknown to me. I'd appreciate any comments from readers; in the meantime I've requested the book and will followup on this later this summer.