Digby on the decline of our republic into authoritarianism:
This unthinking loyalty to party has presented a debate on torture where there ought to be none, a notion of liberty that must be subservient to security, and the sentiment of fear guiding belief far more than reason. There was always this strain in human behavior, but the difference in 21st-century America is that the authoritarian mindset has had seven years to bully the nation. We may score a political victory in November, but the authoritarians will not be vanquished, they will continue to use the weapon of fear, and the lack of accountability for the age of Bush will still leave a gaping hole in the nation, a wound not allowed to properly heal. The ghosts - and the young authoritarians who learned at their masters' feet - won't go away. They'll return in a future Administration and seek more power, make the Presidency more like a monarchy, and thumb their nose at more dissenters who will be more marginalized. This will be the final outrage.
The cleavage, though, is not along party lines. Those who are most up in arms about the neocon subversion of the rule of law are often conservatives, committed to economic freedom and political liberty. Has Obama said he would restore the Constitution to what it was before Bush? Or, will he just be a more genial Monarch?
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