As if in opposition to the Founding Fathers of this nation, there is more than ample evidence that W&Co. is trying to set up a fascist state. Yup...the "F" word. And the damage that the Repugs are doing to this country will be long-lasting indeed. The American Heritage Dictionary defines this as "a philosophy or system of government that is marked by stringent social and economic control, a strong centralized government, usually headed by a dictator, and often a policy of belligerent nationalism. Go to Cornell University's website for another definition: "a philosophy or system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism."
My own Webster's Unabridged states that it is: "any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalist policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition."
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced as the very definition of tyranny." James Madison, The Federalist Papers #47, 1788
Any of this sound vaguely familiar WRT to the current antics of those in charge in Washington? Going beyond these definitions, take a look at the research of Laurence W. Britt (former exec with Allied Chemical, Mobil and Xerox) published three years ago in Free Inquiry magazine. Britt analyzed seven fascist regimes, including Nazi Germany, Mussolini in Italy, Spain under Franco, Salazar in Portugal, Pinochet in Chile, and Suharto's Indonesia, and found "fourteen common threads that link them to recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power." Count all those that currently apply:
1. Powerful and continuing nationalism.
2. Disdain for the recognition of human rights.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
4. Supremacy of the military.
5. Rampant sexism.
6. Controlled mass media.
7. Obsession with national security.
8. Religion and government intertwined.
9. Corporate power is protected.
10. Labor power suppressed.
11. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts.
12. Obsession with crime and punishment.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
14. Fraudulent elections.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist here... I count at least a dozen....
In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a satirical, best-seller titled "It Can't Happen Here" about a populist President becoming dictator to "save" the country from welfare cheats, sex, crime, the liberal press, all while wrapped up in a patriotic, red-white-and-blue outfit. Well, it *could* happen here. It *is* happening here.
It has been said that "secrecy is the first refuge of the incompetent - or the scoundrel" and it this regard, the current administration exceeds even that of the paranoid Nixon administration, or so says John Dean, former White House counsel who when to jail for his ol' boss. In as interesting nexus of events just this week, the office of the Vice President refused an executive order (signed by Bush in 2003) to reduce the number of classified documents - and to some extent, this has actually happened elsewhere in the executive branch. But Cheney, (who got Google/Earth to blur out all of his residences - but not truly strategic places like Storm King Mtn., Mt. Weather, or Camp David) has defied a direct Presidential order. The curious second event was the Supreme Court's ruling on public employees and "whistleblowers". Apparently, the First Amendment doesn't apply to them.
"Hold on to the Constitution and the Republic for which it stands. What has happened once in 6,000 years may never again." Daniel Webster
H. L. Mencken, the humorist, social critic and long-time editor of the Baltimore Sun, best summed it up over a half-century ago: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence, clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Or, if you prefer Groucho Marx: "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." I don't know of a better way to describe Bush's policies both domestically and in the Middle-East.
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." -Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIV, 1781)
"I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country; the least encroachment on those invaluable privileges makes my blood boil." - Benjamin Franklin
