Exactly so, Peace. But the danger is that it could go even further than that.

Those who are the most in favor of releasing the Constitutional constraints on law enforcement, or, God help us, "national security" agencies, strangely enough, are the first to be surprised when they suddenly find themselves staring out from behind the barbed wire. The only thing that brought McCarthy's excesses to a halt was that there were sufficient intelligent, thinking people around who saw what was going on and stopped him.

Back then, it was fear of communists. McCarthy emphasized that and traded on it to gain power, and it later turned out that the Communist Party in America was essentially toothless. Now, it's fear of terrorists. Granted, they can be a danger, but nowhere near a big enough danger to justify putting the country on a war alert, launching full-scale invasions of other countries, or either officially or unofficially declaring martial law. Bush and his current cabal of power junkies are trying to use this to shred the Constitution exactly as McCarthy tried to do. Unless stopped, the inevitable result will be a fascist dictatorship.

Fascism does not require black uniforms, armbands, and jackboots. These are mere superficialities that the small-minded fasten on. What fascism (as defined by Benito Mussolini) does consist of is an essentially homogenous mixture of government and corporations, and the elimination of restraints on government power. The Bush administration is made up primarily of corporate executives (Cheney's relationship with Halliburton for example--only one of many) and their army of hacks and yes-men. All that remains now is for them to remove the Constitutional constraints, and then Bush (or whoever the neo-cons chose) can assume the position of the American Führer.

Or even worse:   take that recipe and mix it with a hefty dose of rigid religious fundamentalism and you have a new Dark Ages; a neo-feudal system, kept in line by a modern version of the Inquisition.

For those who think that this is "paranoia," re-read the first sentence in the second paragraph of this post. It's happened before and it can happen again. Even here. Especially here, because of the number of people who mindlessly intone "This is America! It can't happen here!"

It's been said before:   those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Don Firth