Wolfgang:

I accept your remarks about proportion. I think, nevertheless, that it is fair to say that Bush's machine has moved our country further in the direction of fascism than it has been at any time in the past. Civil rights previously accepted as provided by the consitution have been reduced; Congress has been bullyragged into accepting the delegation of war powers; the nation has stood away from the UN and assumed the right of preemptive declaration of war; the nation has UNILATERALLY determioned a casus belli exiostend and proceeded to ,aunch an invasion on the strength of it, causing the deaths of 10s of thousands of humans on both sides; and a movement was begun by the President to use the national Constitution to enforce religous principles on no better grounds.

Of COURSE these are not identiical to events in Germany in 1933-35; but there's a smell of arbitrary, dictatorial, even Messianic authoritarianism in the air around Washington, and I don't like it. Perhaps the use of the word Fascism is hyperbolic. Perhaps Cheny's claims of imminent threat were, also.

A