Well, what else would you call it?
Quin Hillyer on today’s seeming trend towards greater authoritarianism.
This is scary stuff. It is not just a diminution of freedom, but a frontal assault. And it’s only part of the story, the whole of which is even worse. We now have the government refusing to accept repayment of loans it made to various banks — preferring to keep control of the banks to regaining the taxpayers’ money quickly. Moving from economics to coercion and the use of the state to target political enemies, we have a Homeland Security Department targeting veterans and anti-abortionists as potential terrorists, and a White House leaving open the option of prosecuting its predecessors over honest policy choices made in a time of war and without identifying any specific domestic law supposedly broken. We see selective release of previously classified information for political purposes. We have the advancement of “hate crimes” legislation that makes it a prosecutable offense to think unapproved thoughts. (House Republican Leader John Boehner was right to say the bill makes him “want to throw up.”)
These moves might seem like insignificant outcomes to unrelated situations, but they mean something.
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