Reply #39: It's a valid question

[H2O Man]

that you are asking. I think it's important to keep in mind that it is an effort to give the executive office the dictatorial powers, not Bush as an individual. It might more accurately be called an attempt to impose "statism." It's an attempt to subvert the Constitution, from the concept of separation of powers in the federal government, to the absolute denial of the Bill of Rights to individuals. Again, this is not a new danger to democracy: our nation's history is filled with attempts by various administrations to gain an unconstitutional level of executive powers -- always, always, always for "national security" -- and we have witnessed numerous examples of the peoples' willingness to sacrifice certain groups and certain rights. On Countdown recently, Keith O mentioned examples such as the herding of certain citizens into "relocation camps" during WW2. I had mentioned the more recent dangers posed by Richard Nixon.

The answer to your question, therefore, is going to be found in the historic examples of what people have done in the past to deal with the same problem. In the end, I think that a democratic majority is going to, in and of itself, stop the trend towards statism. Rather, it is the vehicle by which the grass roots may .... much in the sense that Huxley wrote in "Brave New World" that "Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism." That is, perhaps not coincidentally, what my recent essay "Make it Plain" was about.