Fear is a really interesting thing... If you can control people's fears, you pretty much control everything. Currently on display in US healthcare "debate"...
The controlling of people's fear in your usage is also known as manipulation. You're right that it works quite well since it takes advantage of the emotion parts of our psyche that are more fully evolved in us than the newer rational thinking parts.
Not at all. That was just the first thing that came to mind. Generally you could say that every major decision in politics rises and falls with people's fears. This was just a placative example, and not the least right-leaning.
