Here are a few comments I left at Ed Brayton's blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars, a blog hosted at Science Blogs.
The first is from a post called Fein's New Book and Obama's Opportunity, in which Ed reviews a book about the executive power grab by the GWBush administration:
A lot of "gun rights" people in this country say that we need guns in the possession of citizens to prevent tyranny. I have always gotten the feeling that you could take away all their other rights, but as long as they have their guns it would not matter to them. And now, here we are: lying about a war, tapping phones, torture, rendition, yet the gun crowd still supports him. Not a peep about uprising (which seemed to simmer under the surface during the Clinton years). Maybe this is not Tyranny, but at least it is Tyranny Lite. Maybe large chunks of this country should be shipped to North Korea so they can worship their Dear Leader.
The next is from a post called Jeffrey Hart: Republicans the "Stupid Party", in which yet another conservative is shocked, shocked!! at the hatred in the Republican Party demonstrated during the McCain campaign:
I will admit, I have not read the article yet. But what is with these conservatives saying the Republican Party in the USA has gone off the rails? All they did this year is push the same buttons they have been pushing since Nixon (Hart's old boss), plus a few new ones (gays, Mexicans, Arabs, atheists, the 80% of the population NOT in rural areas). I am sure there are people like llewelly's friend who saw this coming a while back. But a lot of them (like Fukuyama in an article Ed linked to earlier) had no problem riding the W Train. Are they really appalled, or do they just want to be in the side that's winning?
A response links to one of the articles I referenced, and says out that while the point has been made before, it bears repeating.
The last is from a post called Gun Shop Reacts to Obama's Election, which pointed out that a lot of people were buying guns because the guv'ment might take them away:
I think people should have a right to bear arms, but I think a lot of the gun nuts have a reactive mentality. A lot of them go on and on and on about how we need guns for defense against crime. Because the world is dangerous. Yet what are they doing to make the world less dangerous? A lot of them do not want to pay taxes to build schools for poor people's children, yet they have no problem paying taxes to build more jails. (Granted, some of them think jails just grow on trees, but that is a whole other issue.) I know that just building more schools in and of itself is not the answer, yet a lot of the "pro-gun" crowd seems to care more about punishment than prevention.
Plus a lot of gun nuts think we need guns in the possession of citizens to prevent the government from imposing tyranny. But as gingerbaker above pointed out, George W. instituted quite a bit of tyranny in the USA. I am sure many would point out that the Bush Administration would only do bad things to terrorists. But who is in the position of defining who is and who is not a terrorist? Well, the government, of course. And to paraphrase Martin Niemöller, what will stop the government from labelling you a terrorist if you had no problem with everybody named "Abdul" being rounded up?
I subscribe to the idea behind the Sinclair Lewis quote that "When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." But I think that fascism in the USA is also like the proverbial frog in boiling water. It will not happen overnight. There will not be tanks rolling down the street one day. It will happen slowly, by degrees, just like it is now. To keep us all safe, of course.
Also, here is an excerpt from another commenter about the actions of the GWB adminstration:
After all, Bush DID:
* secretly build a ton of internment camps
* imprison anyone he defined as an enemy combatant against all notions of convention and law
* effectively suspend habeus corpus
* disappear at least one American citizen
* set up secret CIA torture ships in international waters
* routinely "rendition" political prisoners
* have a father who said atheists should not have citizen rights
* made it easier for a Presidential order to use the armed forces for domestic riot control.
Basically Bush was (is) a fascist - why would it not be reasonable to have fears about those camps?
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