Why We Fight

Dictatorships begin gradually, with the consent of the governed fueled by emotions like fear and rage and greed. A little freedom or due process or deliberation is lost here and there, but there are reasons. A particular group is targeted, but there are reasons. The emergency powers granted the executive become his normal powers, and the emergency never ends. And it turns out that these powers imply even more powers. It's an old story, and apparently we're falling for it again.

It follows from 9/11: attack justified a strong president and war-- the open-ended, no specific- enemy war on terror that turns out to have meant war on Iraq by any means necessary. A pattern of dismissing international relationships and abrogating international agreements, all in the service of an imperialism masked by emotional assertions of benevolence and pure motives.

The military or even worse, private armies, become the solution to every real and perceived problem. And then rights and powers of the people and the checks and balances of government are violated with impunity, and justified by bogus theories like the unitary executive, which is just a two word definition of dictatorship.

It's happening so fast that it's hard to keep up, but here are some of the signs: Attorney General Gonzales telling the press they can go to jail for exposing government wrongdoing, including his; Gonzales stopping investigations into possible criminal behavior by the NSA and others, including him, with bogus use of secrecy claims. And yes, although it's not popular to say so, the FBI raid on a Congressional office, which violates Constitutional separation of powers the same way that NSA spying violates constitutional civil liberties. And now the confirmation for CIA director of the architect of a criminal enterprise, the NSA spying.

We are well on the way to a dictatorship and Congress and the press are allowing it to happen, and they are often its instruments. It has reached the point that partisan politics and other considerations are feeding into the pattern. Democrats who should be defending separation of powers are only too happy to see a Republican Congressional leadership lose a political issue by defending the Constitution. If we really believe we are endangered by a dictatorship, we'd better keep our eye on the ball.

ADDENDUM: Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley: "... unfortunately, civil liberties don't swing back like other issues. Civil liberties is a very precious commodity. When you lose them, it tends to run out of your hand like sand, and it's hard to get it back. And that's one of the dangers here, that presidents, when they acquire power, rarely return it to the people. And so we have to be very concerned. This country is changing in a very significant way, and it's something that citizens have to think about because if there is a war on terror, and I believe that we must fight terror, obviously, but we're trying to defend that Constitution. And we're really at a point where the President is arguing about his own presidential power in ways that are the antithesis of that Constitution and the values that it contains."