the Bush plan to end democracy

I saw Naomi Wolf on the Colbert report talking about her new book, which is apparently an expansion of the article she wrote describing the ten steps governments use to close down an open society, all of which have been done by the Bush administration. It's scary stuff, to see how step by step the administration is threatening a democracy that has lasted over 200 years. At the same time, I'm not ready to flee to Canada quite yet, because my recollection is this is pretty much what was going on in the 1960s. Dissent was called unpatriotic, the FBI was setting up and entrapping these organizations, the threat of communism was used as an excuse to do pretty much anything and the country was divided between people who believed the hippies were going to have a revolution and take over the country and the people who believed we were one step away from martial law.

Somehow we survived last time, so I'm hoping we're going to survive again. The founders of this country thought things through pretty well, and did their best to design a country that could not be subjugated by a despot. And while in the short term the government will sometimes be very close to a terrifying dictatorship, over the long term things always seem to stay at a certain balance. Yes, the system could finally break down, but at the same time the Bush administration is pretty weak right now, and as much as they would love to turn this country into a fascist state, I think the time they were most able to do that has passed. Of course, I could be wrong. It is perhaps best to take seriously the possibility that I am wrong, and fight the government at every turn, until we get these evil, evil people out of office. Which will hopefully be quite soon.

Of course, if a Republican somehow manages to win the presidency next year, fleeing to Canada becomes the best possible option.