Ebbie, Bobert, I agree. To a certain extent.

Are we in the middle of a revolution? I'd say we definately are, but the revolution isn't happening with the people; those groups that are always trying to seize personal power for themselves are starting to succeed, and doing it in a tearing hurry. But very few people are fighting back, least of all our legislative and judiciary branches, and it starting to look more like a coup.

History shows us that this happens from time to time, the pendulum of power swings toward a small group, but eventually our basic belief in democracy brings us back to the center. Personally, I haven't lived through any of those past swings (at least not of an age to really be aware), so it's hard for me to judge. But it looks like power is shifting at a much higher rate of speed than it has in the past, mostly because few people are resisting it.

Is it the time for discussion, demonstrations, and even acts of civil disobediance? Absolutely. Violence would be self-defeating. (Although I think the end of the Vietnam war had a lot more to do with the goverment using political unrest to save face while removing themselves from a situation they didn't want to be in. But I was about 2 years old, so what do I know?)

But let's not forget one of those great shifts of power in our history -- our Civil War. The northern states insisted that the federal government should hold more political power. The southern states disagreed, they still held that the local and state governments were more important. A bloody conflict followed, and our state laws have been much weaker since. That was 140 years ago. 225 years ago, we overthrew our British government. A few years after that, we shredded our own government and created the one we (mostly) have today.

I don't think that we'd have another all-out war like the Civil War, but I do think that a war *could* happen, given the speed with which the executive branch is accumulating power and their disregard for basic civil liberties and the Constitution.

Our founding fathers practically invented guerilla warfare and terrorist tactics to fight off a vastly superior enemy. We still have wacky "militia" groups hiding out in the countryside waging war via fake anthrax letters to abortion clinics and setting bombs around federal buildings. The mechanism and the knowledge is in place for a nasty conflict.

The frog is being lulled to sleep on the stove, but he might wake up. If it does come to that, I am not going to sit in the street and peacefully wait for a tank to roll over me. I love peace, but I'm not a pacifist.