ETERNAL VIGILANCE
To believe that Fascism has occurred in recent times only in countries like German, Italy, and Japan is to deny the pervasiveness of the drive toward totalitarianism in the world. All nations at all times have totalitarian currents running through them. The totalitarian mentality is always present and we always live with and struggle to keep it under control.
Although in the United States we like to think we have escaped these drives, that's not the case at all. Totalitarianism has always been just under the surface in our nation since its founding in the late 18th Century. It is still here. Worse, it is alive and well. The beginning of the 21st Century presents a reinvigorated strain that threatens to undo more than 200 years of reasonable progress toward a nation in which the majority of citizens live in peace and fair comfort.
The totalitarian wing of the Republican party is now so thoroughly entrenched that there is doubt that we citizens can ever regain any real control over our lives. The House and Senate are already under totalitarian control and soon the Judiciary will fall as well. All traditional vehicles of democracy are breaking down: The press is increasingly intimidated, TV and other media that do not hew the party line are put under pressure until they submit; the so-called Patriot Act lays the legal foundation for destruction of all civil liberties; the economy has been destroyed and a huge national debt created that rules out of the use national resources for the benefit of citizens; public education is under attack; corporations are neither required nor expected to live up to their promises to workers; all varieties of religion except the simplest hill-billy version of Christianity are seen as hostile to the true faith; health care policy confiscates the savings and economic resources of the elderly; the land is stripped of natural resources to feed short term corporate greed; relations with other nations is seen as unnecessary and any country that doesn't do as we demand, we attack and destroy.
I have urged one of my senators (the other is a lost cause) to stand up for America and to exercise the vigilance that Thomas Jefferson told us is the price of liberty. We must reject the so-called nuclear option and keep alive some remnant of the founding fathers' dreams of a just and democratic nation. We'll soon find out if we go down the path of totalitarianism as the current administrations seeks or return to the standards of our fathers. It will be a close battle.
Although in the United States we like to think we have escaped these drives, that's not the case at all. Totalitarianism has always been just under the surface in our nation since its founding in the late 18th Century. It is still here. Worse, it is alive and well. The beginning of the 21st Century presents a reinvigorated strain that threatens to undo more than 200 years of reasonable progress toward a nation in which the majority of citizens live in peace and fair comfort.
The totalitarian wing of the Republican party is now so thoroughly entrenched that there is doubt that we citizens can ever regain any real control over our lives. The House and Senate are already under totalitarian control and soon the Judiciary will fall as well. All traditional vehicles of democracy are breaking down: The press is increasingly intimidated, TV and other media that do not hew the party line are put under pressure until they submit; the so-called Patriot Act lays the legal foundation for destruction of all civil liberties; the economy has been destroyed and a huge national debt created that rules out of the use national resources for the benefit of citizens; public education is under attack; corporations are neither required nor expected to live up to their promises to workers; all varieties of religion except the simplest hill-billy version of Christianity are seen as hostile to the true faith; health care policy confiscates the savings and economic resources of the elderly; the land is stripped of natural resources to feed short term corporate greed; relations with other nations is seen as unnecessary and any country that doesn't do as we demand, we attack and destroy.
I have urged one of my senators (the other is a lost cause) to stand up for America and to exercise the vigilance that Thomas Jefferson told us is the price of liberty. We must reject the so-called nuclear option and keep alive some remnant of the founding fathers' dreams of a just and democratic nation. We'll soon find out if we go down the path of totalitarianism as the current administrations seeks or return to the standards of our fathers. It will be a close battle.
posted by Jerry at 9:12 AM
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