Friday, June 16, 2006

Marching America into Fascisim

Click here to read an excellent article on current practices in the U.S. from A La Gauche
We aren't always the good guys and America doesn't always fight for freedom. Sometimes the shadow of the swastika looms over the "land of the free." From Abu Ghraib to Haditha, the Bush administration's ill-conceived and imperialistic invasion of Iraq has proved that the philosopher Voltaire was right when he said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Here at home, the folly of the Iraq war likewise proves that historian Howard Zinn was quite correct when he said, "One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression." From the sadly misnamed "free speech zones" to corral protesters against Bush's policies to the widespread surveillance of phone calls made by Americans, it would seem that despite the prattling of the president it is fascism, not freedom, that is on the march right here in the United States.

Louisiana demagogue Huey Long said in the 1930s that if fascism ever comes to America, it will come wrapped in a red, white and blue package of Americanism. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini called fascism an "illiberal and anti-liberal" rule in which the corporation is king and religion is a tool of the all-powerful state. With the Bush administration's kowtowing to the corporados and genuflecting to the religious right, one doesn't have to look far to see the signs of a police state here in a nation that mouths slogans about freedom, but in reality seems to love freedom only as long as nobody actually uses it.

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